TRAGEDY: Little boy chokes to death while eating grapes at midnight in Spanish New Year’s Eve tradition

DOCTORS have urged parents to cut grapes in half before giving them to children after a toddler choked to death while seeing in the New Year in the traditional Spanish way of eating a fruit for each stroke of midnight.

The three-year-old, whose family are believed to be migrants from Ecuador, was rushed to a hospital in Gijon, on the Bay of Biscay, where doctors tried unsuccessfully for an hour to revive him.

Health professionals claim that eating grapes poses a choking hazard for young children as the smooth surface of the fruit can form a ‘seal’ that prevents air from getting in. Their advice is to cut the fruit in half.