Another year, another 160,000 tomatoes, another 22,000 people throwing them at each other, for one glorious sticky red mess—and a world-wide spate of stories featuring pictures of the aftermath.
For Buñol, in Spain’s Valencia province, it’s not only a significant local fund-raiser (17,000 tickets at €10 each, with free tickets for the town’s 5000 residents); it’s also key to putting the town on the map as a tourist destination. That means not only the participants and a few thousand spectators, but the rest of the year as well.
It used to be bigger, but when the number of uninhibited tomato-throwing participants got to 45,000 the town called ‘too much!’ and started limiting the numbers and selling tickets.
The back-story to La Tomatina is that it started in 1945 after a street brawl broke out near a vegetable stand. It turned out to be so much fun that the next year people started bringing their own tomatoes, faking a quarrel and throwing the tomatoes. Now La Tomatina is also accompanied by other events including a greased-pole climb and a paella-cooking contest.
And the tomatoes? Six trucks, 150 metric tons worth from the Extremadura region. They’re selected for cheap price, low quality and inferior taste. That’s supposed to make participants feel less bad about squandering food…but it also begs the question: Why doesn’t Extremadura grow better tomatoes?
