There’s a tradition in Spain of seeing the New Year in by eating one grape for each chime of the clock at midnight. It can rarely have been more sombrely observed than it was by firemen at Barajas airport in Madrid on Sunday.
They were digging in the rubble of a car park for two men buried by a lorry bombing the day before that ended a nine-month ceasefire called by the Basque separatist group ETA. They paused a few minutes before midnight. Twelve toots of the horn on one of their engines stood in for a bell. They ate their grapes, but, out of respect for the missing men, forwent their usual toast. Then they returned to digging, all saying that they hoped 2007 would finish better than the year they had been seeing out.