Tomatina Festival: Thousands of “fighters” in Buñol – Photos

His roads Buñolin the east Spainwere painted red today as thousands of residents and visitors engaged in a tomato fight, throwing overripe tomatoes at the traditional festival “Tomato”.

Nearly 22,000 people, dressed in white, took part in this frenzy that grips the city every year in the last week of August.

Seven trucks distributed 150 tons of tomatoes to the “fighters”, many of whom went to this area, near Valenciaespecially for the festival. Foreigners pay 15 euros to participate in the festival, while it’s free for locals.

“We love tomatoes! That’s why we decided to come here and we had a great time,” said Taylor, from Australianoting that she and her friends will now “cook spaghetti to go with the sauce.”

The start of the “battle” was given by the fireworks that were lit when one of the participants managed to climb a slippery pole (smeared with soap) and grab a ham hanging from the top.

Senam, from Kenya, said it was a “beautiful, creative, imaginative” celebration.

After the… ammunition ran out, the cleaning crews, equipped with water hoses, cleaned the streets of the tomato pulp.

These particular tomatoes are grown specifically for the festival and are so ripe that they are not considered fit for consumption.

According to the official website of the Tomatina festival, the celebration has its roots in a brawl that broke out in 1945. A group of teenagers, trying to get a closer look at a parade, knocked down one of the participants. Many bystanders then grabbed tomatoes from a nearby stall and used them as makeshift ammunition until police intervened to restore order. The following year, young people of the village did a “reenactment” of the battle and some of them even brought their own tomatoes. In the 1950s, under the dictator Francisco Franco, the event was banned for a few years but resumed in 1959 after some rules were put in place.