Biggest food fight festival
Spain has always been very famous for the festas, whether it’s a bullfight or throwing oranges , they never needed a real reason to party, and here it comes again, the biggest food fight festival, Tomatina. This food fight festival is held on the last Wednesday of August every year, it’s a time when the town near by Valencia, called Bunol, is fulfilled with people willing to get crazy in ketchup sauce. Thousands of people make their ways from all spain and also from abroad to take a party in this crazy Summer festival, World’s Biggest Food Fight!How it works exactly? Well, around 11 am the town gets full of tomato tracks, at Plaza del Pueblo, bringing in the cheapest tomato of Spain, from Extremadura, to not waste the good stuff. Who starts the first throw? Well, that’s a little bit of challenge, in theory there is a wooden pole that some brave soul has to climb and reach a coveted ham, once someone does it, the craziness starts. The signal for the beginning of the fight is firing of water cannons, and once it starts, you are by yourself.
Annually approximately 22000 tomato enthusiasts are attending the biggest food fight in the world, La Tomatina is not about teams or who wins, it’s the gathering together, simply having fun and letting waste five bulbous tracks of tomatoes. There is limited number of participants, 20000 lucky ones, but usually this number goes up to 40000 and even 50000 in 2013. As the town of Bunol is tiny, the accommodation for everyone will be in Valencia.
The Tomatina ends within an hour, so no more tomatoes can be thrown, the great part of cleaning starts, that involves fire trucks to spray down the streets, which is provided from a Roman aqueduct. So no signs of tomatoes will be left , just redish humans walking and screaming around, still charged with the great emotions and stories to tell. There are many stories held up, about how the Tomatina get started. It was back in 1944 in Bulon, when bunch friends started throwing the food at each other, a volley of tomatoes at a carnival parade. No one is sure how this event is originated, but it’s still there, still here, still so much fun, so who cares!Let’s enjoy La Tomatina.
