Bunol, Spain could use some spaghetti and meatballs today to sop up some of the tomatoes from yesterday’s annual Tomatina tomato fight.
Of course smashed tomatoes aren’t quite sauce, but the idea makes nearly as much sense as the yearly frenzy that sees some thousands of participants pay to be part of a giant tomato fight involving around 145 tonnes of tomatoes—marked unfit for consumption. That’s around 180,000 tomatoes.
Tickets to participate go for €15 each, although VIP tickets for ‘perfect pelting points’ cost €150. The funds go to local charities.
The festival’s origin is said to be a 1945 street brawl at a vegetable store. The town’s young people decided it had been so much fun, they returned the next year with tomatoes of their own, and it’s grown from there. It grew so large—as many as 45,000 showed up—that safety limits had to be set. Now there are 5,000 tickets for locals and 17,000 for sale to outsiders.
The day’s events also include a contest to climb a greased pole and retrieve an Iberian ham and a paella cooking contest, using a better grade of tomato.
Image: flydime/Wikimedia Commons
