Source: Pinterest
La Tomatina is a festival held in Spain every year in the Valencian town of Buñol, which is in the east side of Spain. The festival involves throwing tomatoes at each other for fun for one entire hour until the town is cleaned up by the cleanup crew with firetruck hoses. With the citric acid within the tomatoes killing the bacteria, mold and stains, the town becomes even cleaner than before the tomato festival.
But how did something as silly as throwing tomatoes at each other become a yearly festival?
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It all started with a group of young people who went to see a parade of Giants and Big-Heads in August 1945, where people would wear large heads of famous figures or giants made of paper machè and wood to parade all around town. Now because these young people got too excited, they toppled over one of the parade’s big-head over and angered him, leading to hit everyone around him. This led to a riot with everyone hitting each other with a vegetable stall nearby catching their attention. By the time police arrived, people were throwing tomatoes at each other and they were broken up by authorities.
The following year, another group of young people brought some tomatoes from home and decided to re-enact the scene again, with the police breaking up the quarrel. This sparked the beginning of a new festival that continued to this day.
Of course the festival of throwing tomatoes at each other was considered wasting food as well as in some cases a cause for injuries, and was banned in the early 50s. This didn’t stop the people from throwing tomatoes at each other and neither did getting arrested. The festival resumed in 1957 when people started protesting with a tomato burial. They paraded a coffin with a giant tomato inside, while accompanied by a music band who played funeral songs all while mourning over the loss of the tomato festival.
Source: Tomatina.es
Today, the festival is held every last Wednesday of August each year where people all around the town of Buñol throw tomatoes at each other for an hour before people clean up after the town and themselves. The town has a short list of rules that participants of the festival must follow for the safety of the participants and the festival:
- Participants must not throw bottles or hard objects
- Participants must not tear or throw T-shirts
- Squash tomatoes before throwing them to avoid hurting others
- Keep a safe distance from trucks
- Stop throwing tomatoes after the second starter pistol
- Always follow the directions of the security staff
The town has since restricted the festival to people who bought tickets for it with 2012 selling 22,000 tickets, with this year only selling 20,000. So if you’re ever interested in this year’s La Tomatina Festival on August 26th then buy yours quick!
Written by: Edwin Soewono – Student of Hotel and Tourism Business 2015
