La Tomatina is the world’s biggest food fight that takes place in the Spanish town of Bunol every year on the last Wednesday of August. Bunol is a small town that is situated in the Valencia Province, approximately thirty kilometres inland from the Mediterranean Sea. Bunol is famed for its tasty produce of tomatoes and notorious for wearing its produce at the La Tomatina Festival.

The Tomato Festival has become so popular with both the locals of Bunol and its visitors, that the festival now takes place over the entire week, with the La Tomatina as the finale on the Wednesday. The festival is in honour of the town’s patron saints, Luis Bertran and the ‘Mother of God of the Defenceless’, a title of the Virgin Mary.

During the fiesta the town is filled with festivities; parades, fireworks, food stalls and street parties spread throughout the whole town. Food stalls serve traditional Spanish foods, and wine flows freely through the night with dancing and music playing in the streets. Many people dress up in Spain’s national costumes and the fiesta is colourful and vibrant. The night before La Tomatina, many people participate in a paella cooking contest, which people can try and rate.

The Tomato battle or ‘batalla’ takes place on the Wednesday and starts with a ham-on-a-stick contest where competitors race up a pole to retrieve the leg of ham on the top. This is a two-storey high, greased-up pole so it can be a very difficult task. Once the ham is cut down, trucks filled with tomatoes roll down the streets and pelt the crowds with tomatoes. More than 20,000 revellers join in by throwing tomatoes at the trucks and each other, and the streets are soon covered in squashed tomato juices.

More than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets during La Tomatina. After an hour water cannons are fired to signal the end of the battle. The contestants go down to the river to wash off and continue enjoying the last day of the festival.

It is believed that La Tomatina originally began in 1945 when a fight erupted between some boys in the town square of Bunol. A tomato stall was close at hand, and someone threw a tomato, which resulted in the entire town throwing tomatoes at each other. The following year, citizens of Bunol tried to instigate the same food fight again, this time with their own tomatoes, but were banned by the police.

Due to popular demand, La Tomatina was officially recognised in 1959 and has been growing larger ever since. The holiday was banned for a short time during the Spanish State Period under Francisco Franco but returned in full force after his demise in 1975.