La Tomatina is one of those festivals, which are crated by people having fun with the only purpose of upcoming generations to have even more fun. It is a festival with unclear origin and the most important thing is that the people of the town of Bunol, Spain, have created an event so fascinating, that 60 years after its first edition it is now visited by about 50 000 visitors each year.
La Tomationa was most probably created by young people, who wanted to participate in the event called Gigantes y cabezudos / Giants and Big-Heads / and started a tomato fight at the town'n square where the event took place. This quickly became a tradition and the people continued to repeat the fight each year at the last Wensday of August. Although the authorities have stopped the event from happening in some of the years to come, the town eventually was officially allowed to have the Tomatina from 1975 to nowadays.
It is organized by the town hall and it has several very simple rules, ensuring the safety of the participants. It is very important that the tomatoes are squashed before being thrown, it is essential that the participants make way to the passing trucks, ripping off other people's T-shirts is forbidden and so is of course throwing anything else than a tomato.
The fight lasts for one hour, which is pretty enough to cause a really colorful devastation of the town, cleaned afterwards with the kind assistance of the Bunol fire department.
Bunol is very close to the city of Valencia, which makes the transport to the festival very easy for every international traveller, who wants to take part of this trully fascination event.
More about the festival, the history and the town can be found on the official web-site of the event:
source: Graham McLellan @ flickr.com under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
