A very special day

My favourite celebration in Catalonia is The New Year's Eve. This day marks the beginning of a new calendar year. New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which people dance, eat, consume... All people look forward to the 31^st of December because it's a very long and funny night.

Lots of people celebrated this with their family, others with their friends... Normally, New Year is celebrating in the houses with a big dinner, later everybody turns on the TV and waits to be twelve o'clock. When it is twelve o'clock and the bells ring, somebody eat twelve grapes. When people are eating twelve grapes (one one each chime of the clock) it’s normal to wish some special resolutions like Adrian Mole in his diary. The most famous is to stop smoking or like Adrian not to start smoking, be better person and help to other people. After everybody is celebrating the arrival of a new year, playing music, throwing firecrackers... After the clock has finished people greet each other and toast with sparkling wine or cava or champagne. After the family dinner and the grapes, many young people attend New Year parties at pubs or similar places (these parties are called cotillones de nochevieja). Parties usually last until the next morning.

I celebrate it with my family every year. My dad, my mother, my sister and me with my cousins and my uncles celebrate it all together. We usually go to restaurant for New Year in Camprodon. Then I go out with my friends to celebrate this fantastic day. We go to the sports centre there where there are music until six or seven o'clock in the morning. Next morning party has a winter breakfast of chocolate con churros.

In other cultures they don’t eat grapes at 12 o’clock but I think that it is celebrated in different ways around the world. Spanish New Year’s Eve (Nochevieja in Spanish, Cap d’Any in Catalan, Nit de Fi d’Any in Valencian, Cabo d’Anyo in Aragonese) are traditionally including wearing new, red underwear to wait luck in the next opening year. The actual countdown is followed from the clock on the top of the Casa de Correos building in Puerta del Sol Square in Madrid.