45 Facts About La Tomatina: Spanish Tomato Throwing Festival

The annual event of throwing tomatoes at each other is one of the biggest food fight festivals.

Spanish festivals are known to be unusual and unique. La Tomatina festival is widely recognized by people but celebrated only in Spain.

La Tomatina, popularly known as the Tomato Fight Festival of Spain, is an annually observed tomato street fight festival celebrated among young people to enjoy a wholesome time playing with tomatoes amid friends and strangers.

Every year, thousands of people from all across the world visit the small town of Bunol and enjoy this unique festival of making a giant tomato mess on the streets. Participating in this event is pretty simple and cheap, but a curated set of rules is necessary to keep crowd behavior in check.

The haul of truckloads of tomatoes on the town square marks the initiation of an hour's worth of exhilarating fun.

Facts About La Tomatina

The eccentric food fight of La Tomatina has its fair share of surprising facts and was initiated back in the '90s. Since then, it has been followed by young people to commemorate the spirit of this long celebrated festival with no proven roots.

Every year, the last Wednesday of August witnesses tons of tomatoes thrown across the streets to celebrate this fun event.

• Surprisingly, although known for the La Tomatina festival, Bunol does not grow tomatoes. Tomatoes from all parts of Spain are sourced to the town for the La Tomatina festival.
• About 88,000 lbs (40 metric tons) of tomatoes are used at every La Tomatina festival.
• The festival creates an insurmountable amount of mess, but cleaning is rather easy. Due to the citric acid found in tomatoes, its magic as a disinfectant works to make the streets sparkling clean after the tomato fight.
• The tomato fight starts at 10 a.m. and lasts only for an hour.
• La Tomatina offers very limited tickets for the event.
• No tomatoes are thrown or fought with after the designated festival time is over.
• Fire trucks are used to hose down the streets with water for after-cleaning.
• Despite being sourced from all of Spain, the region of Extremadura is one of the major suppliers.
• La Tomatina festival only uses low-quality tomatoes that lack taste, firmness and are cheap.
• Observing the fun festival in Spain, many countries like China, Colombia, and Costa Rica started their own versions of this festival.
• An Indian city, Bengaluru, organized a similar event once, which the authorities condemned and banned for 'wastage of food.'
• Spanish people believe the festival is for harmless fun and not a waste of food as garbage bins in Spain have more waste each day than the tomatoes used in La Tomatina.
• Various competitions for prize money are also organized amid the La Tomatina festivities.

La Tomatina's History

The iconic La Tomatina festival has no proven religious or cultural roots, but wide participation in the food festival has made it a significant part of history. The origin story revolving around La Tomatina is related to an old street brawl expanding into the official festival, now widely celebrated by the Spanish town.

As said, all great discoveries are accidental; this festival with tomatoes somewhat lives up to the same.

• La Tomatina festival is not related to any religious or cultural symbol.
• La Tomatina was initiated in 1945 during a Giants and Big-heads parade.
• The parade is known to be the place of accidental origin of this festival. A dispute in the parade caused angry participants to throw tomatoes and other vegetables at each other.
• What started as an activity of conflict grew into a fun activity the next year. A similar incident reoccurred, and this repeated a few times until the start of the yearly tradition of celebrating it as an event.
• The '50s saw a ban on the La Tomatina festival due to a lack of religious or cultural roots to the event.
• The festival was banned under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
• People protested against the ban, due to which the event restarted again.
• The authorities again banned La Tomatina, and people chose a new way to protest against the ban.
• A tomato funeral took place where a large tomato was carried in a coffin and buried.
• Protesters succeeded in bringing back the event, and the annual tradition was finally adopted as an official festival in Valencia.
• The festival was officially recognized in the year 1957.
• Due to a report shared by the Spanish television program 'Informe Semanal,' La Tomatina found popularity worldwide.
• The Spanish Department of Tourism recognized the festival as a Festivity of International Tourist Interest due to the increase in popularity.
• Authorities reduced the original number of participants from around 50,000 to 20,000.
• La Tomatina events for 2020 and 2021 were canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rules Of La Tomatina

La Tomatina encourages everyone to go crazy and have a great time, but with the assurance of being vigilant of people and their safety. To keep people safe and the food fight a friendly occasion, local communities, encourage people to follow a devised set of rules.

Bunol Town Council created these rules to prevent physical harm among the crowd during the tomato fight.

• Ripe tomatoes are to be used.
• Tomatoes must be crushed properly before throwing.
• Hard objects are restricted from being brought into the festival arena.
• A safe distance from the tomato trucks must be ensured.
• People must not throw any object other than tomatoes on other people.
• As soon as the second shot is fired, people should stop throwing tomatoes at each other.
• People must not tear each other's t-shirts off.
• Participants are instructed to move and let in the local tomato trucks.
• Security staff's instructions must be strictly followed.
• Residents and local communities must not be bothered by the festivities.

Significance Of La Tomatina

The unique annual event now represents the spirit of Spanish culture with its frolic event, bringing people together to have a joyful time. 

La Tomatina is not just a fight with tomatoes but an event attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world to a small town in Spain, acquainting them with Spanish culture, people, food, and a lot more. 

La Tomatina promotes happiness in the form of an entertaining event, where you meet new people and share the joy of festivities by having a tomato fight across Valencian streets.

• La Tomatina is accompanied by a week full of festivities, including slugfest and paella cooking contests.
• Palo Jabon signifies the starting of the Tomatina festival. A piece of ham is hung on a greasy pole in the town square, and the goal is for people from the crowd to climb the pole and retrieve the ham. People sing encouraging songs to motivate those climbing the pole while some spray the climber with a water hose. As soon as the piece of ham is dropped from the pole, the festival starts.
• La Tomatina has helped Bunol receive more visits with its growing popularity.
• The festival is also celebrated in honor of Valencian town's patron saints Luis Bertran and Mare de Deu dels Desemparats.
• La Tomatina represents the spirit of Spain by turning an event of conflict into a long-running heritage of an annual celebration.
• Tomatoes are said to represent defiance and celebration.
• La Tomatina is known for its distinct festivity.