La Tomatina

What is La Tomatina and why would I want to go?

Picture this. You spend the morning enjoying pitchers of Sangria, toasting friends and enjoying the warming Spanish sun. You're dressed in your whitest of whites. You make your way out to the city's central street. After several valiant attempts, some drunkard is able to climb the greased flagpole and remove a large ham from the top of it. That means it's GO TIME! You turn, and just CREAM those friends of yours in the face with slightly overripe, squished tomatoes! Yes, you're in the world's largest tomato fight, and you're holding your own. Drinking and throwing tomatoes at your best friend. What could be better? It's the end of the growing season, and they pour millions of pounds of surplus tomatoes into the city streets, to be fought over by drunken Spaniards and a few brave Americans. Do you have what it takes? You may have to see this to believe it.

The history of Festival de la Tomatina

It all started on the last Wednesday of August 1945, when the young people of that time were in the village square, where the “Festival de la Tomatina” is celebrated. As the local authorities and the music band were parading during a festival of “giants and big-headeds”, a group of these young people who wanted to participate in the festival pushed the other young people who were wearing costumes. One of the young people fell on the floor, and when he got up he started to hit everyone there, so everybody started fighting. Nearby there was a vegetable market stall in the street with the boxes of vegetables ready to be sold. The young people started to throw tomatos to each other until the police took control and stopped that “battle” and ordered the responsible party to pay for the damages.

The following year, the young people of the village repeated the “battle” but they brought their own tomatos from home. Again this was broken up by the local police. After repeating the same celebration during consecutive years, the festival was non-officially established. These people did not imagine that they had established a tradition that would grow year by year.

In the beginning of the fifties the festival was forbidden by the City Hall of Buñol. But it did not stop some people from repeating the event and they were imprisoned. The village asked for the festival to be allowed and they insisted so much that finally the local authorities agreed to allow it. Each year there were more and more people participating in the festival, they had their pockets full of tomatos and they were ready to throw water to each other, to jump in the fountains and to participate in other ‘loutish acts’. The problem was that this battle also involved the people who were only interested in watching and sometimes there were important people being ‘attacked’. So the festival was forbidden again.

In 1955 and as a protest the people celebrated ‘the tomato funeral’, a big demonstration where the villagers carried a coffin with a big tomato inside and they were accompanied by the band of music playing funeral marches. In 1957, the festival was definitely allowed and nowadays the City Hall organises and promotes this festival which made them famous all over the world.

The festival became popular all over Spain due to the Javier Basilio’s report, broadcasted in the TV program Informe Semanal.

Since 1980, the City Hall supplies the people with the tomatos, and every year more and more tons of tomatos are used, also there are more and more visitors.

On the 27 August 2002, the General Tourism Office awarded the Tomatina of Buñol with the title of <Festival of International Tourist Interest>.