Day 35 - Valencia / Buñol

---

Today was the day... La Tomatina 2011!!
We were up early and ready for breakfast at 6:00am. Whos silly idea was it to go out on the town before a day of thowing tomatos at each other in the heat...blah. We were struggling but made it out and on the bus by 7:15am where we drove the hour or so to Buñol, Spain.
La Tomatina has been held here since (officially) 1954. Its not 100% known how or why it all came about. Some believe it started that in 1945, during a parade of gigantes y cabezudos, young men who wanted to participate in the event staged a brawl in town's main square, the Plaza del Pueblo. Since there was a vegetable stand nearby, they picked up tomatoes and used them as weapons. The police had to intervene to break up the fight, and forced those responsible to pay the damages incurred.
The following year the young people repeated the fight on the same Wednesday of August, only this time they brought their own tomatoes from home. They were again dispersed by the police. After repeating this in subsequent years, the party was, albeit unofficially, established. In 1950, the town allowed the tomato hurl to take place, however the next year it was again stopped. A lot of young people were imprisoned but the Buñol residents forced the authorities to let them go. The festival gained popularity with more and participants getting involved every year. After subsequent years it was banned again with threats of serious penalties. In the year 1957, some young people planned to celebrate "the tomato's funeral", with singers, musicians, and comedies. The main attraction however, was the coffin with a big tomato inside being carried around by youth and a band playing the funeral marches. Considering this popularity of the festival and the alarming demand, 1957 saw the festival becoming official with certain rules and restrictions. These rules have gone through a lot of modifications over the years.
Another important landmark in the history of this festival is the year 1975. From this year onwards, "Los Clavarios de San Luis Bertrán" (San Luis Bertrán is the patron of the town of Buñol ) organised the whole festival and brought in tomatoes which was being brought by the local people before this. Soon after this, in 1980, the town hall took the responsibility of organizing and making the festival big.
At around 10:00am0, festivities begin with the first event of the Tomatina. It is the "palo jabón", similar to the greasy pole. The goal is to climb a greased pole with a ham on top. As this happens, the crowd work into a frenzy of singing and dancing while being showered in water from hoses.
Once someone is able to drop the ham off the pole, the start signal for the tomato fight is given by firing the water shot in the air and trucks make their entry. The signal for the onset is at about 11:00am when a loud firework is left off and the chaos begins.
Several trucks throw tomatoes in abundance in the Plaza del Pueblo. The tomatoes come from Extremadura, where they are less expensive and are grown specifically for the holidays, being of inferior taste.
The estimated number of tomatoes used are around 150,000 i.e. over 41,000kgs. After exactly one hour, the fight ends with the firing of the second firework, announcing the end. The whole town square is coloured red and rivers of tomato juice flow freely. Fire Trucks hose down the streets and participants use hoses that locals provide to remove the tomato paste from their bodies. Some participants go to the pool of “los peñones” to wash. After the cleaning, the village cobblestone streets are pristine due to the acidity of the tomato disinfecting and thoroughly cleaning the surfaces.
The city council follows a short list of instructions for the safety of the participants and the festival:
1. The tomatoes have to be squashed before throwing to avoid injuries. (they were mostly)
2. No other projectiles except tomatoes are allowed. (t-shirts and flip flops were thown)
3. Participants have to give way to the truck and lorries. (this is difficult when there is barely enough room in the streets for these trucks to fit on their own!)
4. The festival doesn't allow ripping off T-shirts. (this doesn't stop people doing it, we were lucky)
5. After the second shot indicative of ending the tomato hurl, no tomatoes should be thrown. (they were thrown for ages after, well, what was left was and a whole lot of 'juice'😉
All in all it was just a tonne of fun; once you got over the pain rom the tomatos hitting you and the acid from them getting in your eyes.
We did get hosed off by a local but that wasn't enough so we made our way down to the river like everyone else to clean off. We got off what we could then started on our walk back to the bus. On the way we stopped off for some Paella and Sangria. It was soo good. We were so hungry after having breakfast so early and by this point it was about 1:30pm.
We got changed into our clean clothes before getting on the bus then we were back at the hotel by about
3:45pm.
We jumped quickly in a cab to go to old town to drop off our two boxes of things we were sending home then did a bit of shopping before getting some McDonalds for dinner because it was convienient.
We caught a cab back to the hotel where I shampooed my hair three times and even after I dried it I was still finding bits of tomato in it!
We jumped in a cab to Old Town to the Museum for the official afterparty. It was held on the steps of the museum, completely open to the public.
The drinks were super cheap but a lot of people didn't come as, I guess, so many were completely exhausted (like we were). We danced the night away before it reached 2:00am and I'd had enough, I could not handle any more.
What a fantastic day. I highly recommend it to anyone as it really is a once in a life time thing, though, in saying that, I'd totally go out of my way to try and do itat least once more!

(information describing the history of La Tomatina are taken from Wikipedia)

---