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The Spaniards have prepared themselves for a merry battle

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Travel Articles >> Locations >> Europe >> Spain Travel Articles >> Events

The house walls are covered with blood red smudges in small alleys of this city. Red streams that sometimes rise to a height of half a metre flow down the paved side streets. People disperse in different directions, stroll knee-deep in red muddy slush, their clothes are soiled with red all over – apparently they won’t manage to wash off these stains any more.
What is this? Is this war? Is this a new blockbuster shooting?
No, - a satisfied tourist who visited Valencia, the Spanish province, at the end of August will answer you, - this is a feast! After that he/ she is likely to grin contentedly and perhaps he/ she will even show you his/ her photo, on which his/ her formerly white T-shirt began to look like tomato salad. The secret is just in tomatoes: merry Spaniards that are disposed to stormy entertainments approved the last Wednesday of each August as the date of boisterous tomato fights, and the feast itself was named La Tomatina. The idea of the feast is to pelt each other with tomatoes, to bathe in slush, to plunge those who don’t want to do this voluntarily in it, to push each other, to make a friendly brawl and after that to get rid of the stained clothes.
The event doesn’t possess any political or religious hidden motive. Everything began with the collision of two opponent youth groups in the market square during the city feasts 62 years ago: initially the slightly drunk youngsters fought, and then they began to pelt each other with tomatoes that they took at the stalls from the market women; the youth liked the vegetable brawl so much that it was repeated next year; admittedly, it was held without any hostility towards each other, as you will be told in Buñol settlement. However La Tomatina was prohibited as a mass hooliganism in early 1950’s, but it became the official feast of the settlement beginning with 1957.
100 tons of tomatoes, by means of which the locals and the guests that are expected to make up not less than 40 thousand people will fight during an hour – from 11 o’clock according to local time, will be dropped from five huge dump trucks in the centre of the settlement in the morning. The participants are strictly prohibited from bringing bottles or any other objects that can wound the competitors of the tomato brawl. It is advised to mash tomatoes in your hands before the throw, to use only old clothes and underwater swimming glasses so that tomato juice doesn’t get into your eyes.
Tomatoes that are delivered to Buñol are bought for municipal money in Medicitrus agricultural cooperative in the neighbouring province of Castellon. The expenditures on tomatoes, which are cultivated superfluously in the region, are minimal in comparison with the income from tourism, - as the Spaniards and foreigners that come to see tomato battles usually stay several days in the settlement. The practical Spaniards have found an advantage not only in tourism: they think that tomato juice disinfects the streets, and the roadways become unusually clean. A particular care was taken of the tourists’ neatness: 500 shower cubicles are constructed in the city.
“Tomatina” is followed by the patronage feasts in honour of the patron saints of Buñol - Saint Louis Bertrand and Our Lady of the Forsaken, - that are held no less merrily than the tomato feast.

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Article Submitted On: August 28, 2007