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'La Tomatina’ gets messy this week in Spain
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Food fight! 'La Tomatina' in Spain AP
The world’s biggest food fight commences Wednesday in Buñol with the famous “tomatina” tomato battle near Spain’s sunny Mediterranean Coast.
The otherwise sleepy town of Buñol becomes the center of the party world each third Wednesday of August, when it plays host to the now famous “La Tomatina” fiesta (www.tomatina.org/).
More than 50,000 revelers converge on the town of 9,000 inhabitants and paint the town red – literally – as more than 100 metric tons, estimated to be about 150,000 tomatoes, are disgorged from big trucks.
The festivities begin early, usually around 10 a.m., when determined locals try to climb a greased pole to reach a Spanish jamón attached at the top of it.
Once the pig leg is liberated, the battle royale begins at 11 a.m., when a shot of a rocket marks the opening of aggression. The battle lasts until a second rocket is sounded, usually about an hour or so later.
Big trucks converge near the Plaza del Pueblo, dumping their loads of over-ripe and rotten tomatoes (bad for eating, perfect for hurling), anxiously awaited by tens of thousands of revelers packing the narrow, white-washed streets.
Locals will sometimes cover their homes with plastic sheeting, but it’s all in vain as the entire sea of humanity and any nearby structures are soon plastered by tomatoes.
Once the second rocket sounds, the battle quickly winds down and guerreros search out showers and hoses to clean themselves off. Others head down to the river to wash clean. Incredibly, locals begin the clean-up straight away and within hours, there’s hardly a rotten tomato to be found.
There are actually rules de guerre during the fiesta.
The local town council forbids bottles or other types of containers into the food-fight zone. They also urge people not to throw unbroken tomatoes and suggest they break tomatoes in their hand before letting loose with an artillery barrage.
And finally, throwing of wet or soggy T-shirts is also forbidden, which evidently hurt more than a tomato to the face.
Certainly don’t bring your Sunday best if you manage to get there in time. Most wear bathing suits and little more, with perhaps some eye protection in the form of swimming goggles. Some even bring along a snorkel to good effect.
Buñol is about 35km west of Valencia (www.lahoya.net/pueblos/bunol.htm). Most partiers take trains or buses as parking is limited (and you don’t want to risk your car getting plastered by rotten tomatoes).
No one really knows the exact origins of the fiesta, but it’s grown to become of the most famous in a nation known for its parties (www.spanish-fiestas.com/).
Local legend says it was a fight between neighbors after a truck spilled tomatoes onto the streets. Others say it dates back from a tradition of heaving tomatoes at unpopular politicians. Franco shut down the party because it wasn’t of religious or of official significance, but the event was reborn when the Spanish dictator died in 1975.
For more info: www.tomatina.es/
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