The "Tomatina" festival is Spain, an hour-long street bash inspired by a food fight, charged participants an entry fee for the first time, according to the Associated Press. The festival took place on August 28 in Bunol, which is located outside of Valencia, Spain.
The festival had thousands of participants who paid the entry fee to the town, burdened with debt in a country that was hit hard by the recession. The participants splattered each other with tomatoes that they threw at each other in the street.
The festival began after a food fight broke out among children who staged a brawl in the Plaza de Pueblo when they weren't included in a parade in 1945. They used tomatoes because a vegetable stand was located nearby. The fight was broken up by police, according to the many theories of the festival's origins.
Today, there are 20,000 participants in the bash, which lasts for about an hour, according to the town. Five thousand tickets were allotted for local residents of Bunol and 15,000 tickets were allotted for outside participants.
Six trucks brought in the tomatoes for the bash. They carried 130 tons of ripe tomatoes. Portable showers were also set up for participants to clean themselves up after the festival.
The fee to participate was 10 euros, the equivalent of $13, which was intended to cover the cost of the festival. Residents of Bunol don't have to pay a fee.
The festival has a small set of rules: tomatoes have to be squashed before they are thrown, no other projectiles other than tomatoes are permitted, participants have to get out of the way for trucks, participants can't rip off t-shirts and after the second shot is fired, indicating the end of the tomato fight, no additional tomatoes may be thrown.
The town of Bunol has a population of 10,000 people and is five million euros in debt.
Video footage of the food fight.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
