Spain La Tomatina

La Tomatina (The Tomato)

Every year the tiny town of Bunol, Spain - explodes in red. La Tomatina festival, held on the last Wednesday of August, is a tomato fight that engulfs Bunol in a cyclone of tomatoes.

Bunol is a small town of 9,000 residents, located 30 minutes train ride from Valencia. During La Tomatina, it transforms in to a giant party and food fight with 30,000 tourists, mostly backpackers, descending from all over the globe. With few hotel rooms, most revelers party and sleep all-night in the streets, or do the same in nearby Valencia, packing the early morning trains to Bunol.

This coalescence of 40,000 revelers and 130,000 kilos of tomatoes creates a natural disaster of sorts. Visitors arrive finding shopkeepers in a mad frenzy; boarding and taping every crack and crevice of their stores, making them watertight up to 4 stories high. The morning atmosphere is as if the town levy might break or a hurricane is bearing down on the coast. The merchants have good reason to worry, when the festival ends, the town is flooded in red pulp.

On any other day, a person spotted walking down the street wearing homemade riot gear and dive mask might be out of place, but not during La Tomatina. Some come dressed for guerrilla warfare, others wear white tuxedos. One Australian man, on his bachelor party, wore swim gear and netted stockings with a target on his butt that read, “Spanish men throw like girls!”

Visitors and residents begin to congregate in the town center in the early morning, to compare tomato throwing strategies, people watch, and drink beer. The festival cannot begin until a pole greased with lard is scaled and a pig leg at the top retrieved. Human pyramids form and the greased pole spectacle becomes an event of its own.

By 11 a.m. nervous energy from the crowd spawns water fights and various articles of clothing stripped or ripped off and used as projectiles. Oleeee!!!! Ooleeee!!!!! - Oleeee!!!!! Ooleeeeee!!!!! - rings in a continuous chorus like wave through the streets at intervals rudely interrupted by impatient chants of - To-ma-te!!! To-ma-te!!! To-ma-te!!!!! - as the crowd beckons for the war to begin.

By 11:45 the projectile war looks like the skies over Baghdad during the Gulf War. Wet clothing is flying at every velocity from all directions.

At noon an exploding rocket signals the start of the festival, the crowd resounds with a booming cheer. Large semi trucks begin to motor at a snails pace, down the main street, through the crowd, stopping every few feet to dump piles of tomatoes into the swarm. Local mercenaries perched on top of the trucks bait the crowd with handfuls of ammunition, and then pelt them with the red bombs.

Tomato war erupts in domino fashion as the 1st truck makes its way through, and Bunol bursts into a volcano of chaos and carnage. No one is safe, there is no place to take refuge, and everyone exhibits what could only be described nicely as bad manners. Total strangers begin squishing tomatoes in each others face and throwing them from every direction. Most agree they have never been so violated in their whole life. In this battle - everyone is a loser - even the news teams camped 5 stories above.

Two hours later, after the 6th and last truck has passed, it is hard to believe what occurred. People are physically and emotionally spent, shell-shocked, completely coated in tomato pulp, wading knee-deep in tomato paste looking for survivors.

If you are into this sort of thing, it is some of the most fun you will ever have. Advance food fighters can try Carnevale di Ivrea, in Italy, where the battle wages for 3 days - with oranges - and a jury gives awards for best tactical warfare. For the more sophisticated there is Batalla del Vino, or “Wine War,” held in Haro, Spain.

Written and photographed by
Roger Arnold
Photojournalist
www.rogerarnold.net
rogeronsafari@yahoo.co
Copyrighted Roger Arnold 2006
Roger Arnold is a photojournalist and cameraman.  More of his work is available at www.rogerarnold.net