Revellers in the city centre greeted the new year by eating 12 grapes in time with the chimes at Madrid's central PuertadelSol clock in a national tradition, while hundreds of thousands partied in Berlin to live music in the landmark Brandenburg Gate.
When tens of thousands of young Spaniards emerged in May, apparently out of nowhere, to turn PuertadelSol, a square in central Madrid, into a tent city, the tenor of their complaint was far from revolutionary.