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The Tomato Fight

The Tomato Fight

Surely the worlds' biggest food-fight: every year around 27,000 people descend on the tiny Spanish village of Bunol (in the Valencia region of Spain) for the largest tomato war on earth. More than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes are used in this annual festival held on the last Wednesday of August every year.

Started with a ham-on-a-stick contest where competitors race up a pole to retrieve a smoked leg of ham and once the ham is cut down, the crowd put on eye protection and cry for tomatoes as trucks dump the squishy produce onto the village streets. They then proceed to pelt each other with them until all have been used up.

The festival is called 'the Tomatina' and is basically a town-wide tomato fight. It is thought the tradition began in 1945 when a fight erupted among two young members of a carnival crowd. A vegetable stall was nearby in the town square and everyone started throwing tomatoes at each other. Exactly one year later, young people met at the square, but this time with their own tomatoes. Another food-fight started but was broken up by police.

In the following years this practice was banned by the authorities, but due to popular demand was given official recognition in 1959. This was only to occur if participants would respect the start and the end of tomato-throwing being announced with a banger.

There are very few rules in La Tomatina - it is compulsory to squish your tomato before sending it into the red blur of the crowd before you, and other projectiles are not allowed. Don't worry about running out of ammunition because there's always a monumental arsenal of ripe fruit. Participants have two hours in which to hurl them at what will be, for that brief time, thousands of enemies.

Within hours, though, the town is transformed back to its former self. Shopkeepers take down their tarpaulins and everyone chips in to hose down the town and return it to its former "tomato-less" glory.