by Manjit Handa
Every year, Buñol, a charming town in Spain, hosts La Tomatina, the world's largest vegetable (tomato) fight. Situated 30 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea and well-connected to Madrid and Valencia, this place explodes into a fiery blaze of tomato-hurling on the fourth Wednesday of every August.
The origin of the tomato fight is disputed and everyone in Buñol seems to have a different story, but most of them agree that it started around 1940, in the early years of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
The battle takes place as a part of a week-long celebration filled with festivities that represents the culmination of the week's events. The biggest tomato fight in the world, La Tomatina started as pure fun activity; during the forties, in Buñol's main town square, some friends initiated a tomato fight for unknown reasons. It's unclear what exactly triggered the fight—whether the hail was aimed at city officials or something else was the cause—nobody knows exactly. As per the stories, a vegetable stall was nearby in the town square and everyone started throwing tomatoes at each other. Soon enough, the rowdy hooliganism drew passers-by into the fray and before time everyone seemed to be having a great time. It was so much fun that from that day onward, the fiesta began to be celebrated annually and has grown bigger with each passing year.
And who doesn’t love a good food fight? The populaces of Buñol paint the town red each August. Harmless tomato warfare. For a week leading up to the epic battle, the town of Buñol is filled with parades, fireworks, and food and street parties. The night before La Tomatina, the narrow streets beneath the town's medieval bell tower are filled with tomatoes in a much more appetizing shape than they will be the next day. Wine and food flow around the small town until the wee hours of the day. Then, early Wednesday morning, shopkeepers and traders along the Plaza set out covering windows and doors in preparation for the oncoming mess.
The festival is started with a ham-on-a-stick contest where competitors race up a pole to recover a smoked leg of ham. When the ham is cut down, people wear eye protection and cry for tomatoes as trucks dump the squishy produce onto the streets. Then, it's time for war and they proceed to bombard each other with the produce until all have been exploited. Dressed in clothing doomed to be garbage, more than 20,000 revelers retaliate against the truckers, each other and anything else that strays within range of their reach. The more imaginative among the partakers often rub the tomatoes into their hair, or that of their companions while others don’t shy from licking or taking a bite either. Soon the streets are flooded in seeds, pulp and tomato guts—a river of marinara sauce.
The insanity ensues until more than 90,000 pounds of tomatoes have been hurled at anything that is tangible. And a special word for the visiting tourists—be aware that a camera or any such object is not spared either.
Surprisingly, the battle is over in less than half an hour. Within a few hours, one would never know that any such thing ever took place in the sleepy streets of Buñol. All traces of pounds of tomatoes are washed from the streets while the revelers go to the riverside to clean up. Order is thus restored.
In order to draw more tourism into the small town of Buñol, La Tomatina has bloomed into a full fledged fête which coincides with the festival for the town's patron saint.
While there are revelers who devour upon the tradition, there are also people who are critical of the whole idea itself—people who vouch for the famine driven, poverty ridden all across the world. History has it that the practice of the fiesta was banned by the authorities for some time, but due to popular demand, was again given official recognition in the year 1959.
Think of it, some garlic added to this river of tomato sauce as topping to pizza(s) could feed numerous hungry mouths in the Third World Countries. Food for thought??
