120 tons of tomatoes were thrown around in Buñol, Spain on Wednesday, making it the largest tomato fight in the world.  The occasion?  La Tomatina, an annual Spanish celebration held on the final Wednesday in August.  La Tomatina is one of Spain’s most popular summer festivals, drawing tourists from all over the world for a week of festivities that concludes with the famous tomato battle.

The history behind this unique festival has several explanations, but many say the festival evolved after 1945 during a previous parade when a group of kids accidentally tripped one of the parade members, who got up and started swinging at them.  The kids threw tomatoes at him in retaliation, and came back that same Wednesday the following year and threw tomatoes again.  Despite police efforts to intervene in tomato throwing, the tomato fight attracted more and more people every year and eventually became the massive event it is today.

Whether or not La Tomatina truly started that way, there’s no question that this festival is a widely recognized event—it even has its own set of rules. The tomato fight starts at 11 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m.  Participants are not allowed to bring any bottle or hard object that could cause an accident or rip any t-shirts.  Furthermore, tomatoes must be completely crushed before throwing, and the people carrying the tomatoes must not be thrown at.  A second bang indicates the end of the fight, and participants must immediately stop throwing tomatoes.

 

 

To every tomato-grower out there who can’t bear to make any more gazpacho but needs a creative way to use up that surplus of tomatoes that comes at the end of August: Spain has an answer for you.

 

Reach food editor Veronica here!