New Years traditions in Barcelona

To celebrate New Year’s Eve in Barcelona always is something interesting. In this blog post I will talk about the New Years traditions in Barcelona! Year after year Barcelona is becoming a more popular destination for tourists wanting to receive the New Year in a different way. Along with the growing popularity of Barcelona as a holiday destination for New Year the requests for advice and tips grows accordingly. A considerable amount of people again decided to rent one of the many rental apartments Barcelona offers during New Year.

The Spanish normally will have some dinner with the family. These dinners are marked by the funny habit of everyone putting on party hats, fake noses and glasses. Some people will hold whistles and others have horns. Making sound is part of the Mediterranean culture, or so it seems 😉

Of course this dressing-up carnival alike habit leads to many smiles on everyone’s faces as all in all the table looks very funny, and that is exactly what the New Year celebration is about in Spain. After dinner, that can be Spanish seafood or small tapas like ham, served on bread, the television is switched on. Opposite to the most traditions throughout the world, in Barcelona, the most surprising is definitely that there are not any fireworks at midnight.  In Spain the people are very alert to the television awaiting the so-called “campanadas”, which basically translates into chimes. The chimes of the main clock located on the “Puerta Del Sol” square in Madrid are broadcasted live on most television channels. You can watch this live on any television in the accommodation Barcelona welcomes you in.

Now, another curious tradition the Spanish have is that when these clocks start sounding the “quarters”, people will start eating grapes. Now you will be asking yourselves: grapes? Did I read this correctly? The answer to that is: yes, grapes…  When the bells of the clock start to sound at exactly 36 seconds before midnight, in total 12 times, the people eat one grape every bang of the clockworks. You should be pretty fast as well because 12 grapes aren’t always easy to chew and swallow in such a short period of time.

Does this sound easy to you? Well in that case I suggest that you buy yourself a bunch of grapes and try it at home. The average time between eating the grapes is 3 seconds.. Good luck!

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