La Tomatina Spanish Tomato Festival at Buñol
Practical Joke Turned All-Out Spanish Tomato War!
150,000 tomatoes; 20,000 unrelenting participants; and 2 hours of exhilarating entertainment! That is the meaning of this once-a-year popular Spainsh tomato festival, held at the Plaza del Pueblo, in the tiny Spanish town of Buñol, just 15 minutes by train from Valencia in Spain.
It’s name – La Tomatina. How it began – no-one really knows, yet its origins lie somewhere between a ‘practical joke’ of throwing tomatoes to silence a singing townsman, to a riot that broke out over a disagreement between some youths and members of a parade in 1945. The battle was broken up by police, but the following year on the same date, the men came prepared with their own tomatoes. The date then became known as the day of the Tomatina and has been celebrated ever since. It’s held on the last Wednesday of August every year, at ten o’clock in the morning – this year being 27th August 2008.
