lizard digital

We arrived in the town of Buñol two weeks before La Tomatina. For the uninitiated, La Tomatina is a food fight of gargantuan proportions. The local council brings in truckloads of tomatoes and everyone throws them at everyone else. It a crazy event that attracts around 30,000 people each year.

We had arrived early for two reasons. Firslty we needed to find a camp for a two week stay that had WIFI internet access so I could do a project for a client. Secondly we wanted to speak to the local council to see if we could get a press pass to shoot the event from the best possible position.

After visiting the local police station we were directed to the town hall and ultimately to the correct person. She showed me the windows where the photographers would be located and told us to be there early for the event. The town hall office site right in the middle of the ‘action’ and its windows offer the ideal position to shoot from.
“Get here at 8.00am. La Tomatina starts at 11.00am. There will be television crews from all over the world so it’s pretty busy.”

We also scouted the town for somewhere to park our camper van and decided to get back to town the day before La Tomatina in order to get a parking space. All of this ground work was later to pay dividends. Many people who attend the event for the first time have no idea where the event actually takes place and the town, on first inspection, does not appear to lend itself to this type of event.

We then disappeared to the town of Navajas for a couple of weeks until my project was completed. During this period we also visited Valencia which was actually rather underwhelming. We spent a day at the new aquarium which was interesting but rather overpriced and due to a total lack of assistance from the info desk at the Valencia train station we missed a connecting train back to Navajas and found ourselves in the middle of nowhere wondering how to get back to our camp. Eventually we managed to get another train back two stops but the last train to Navajas had gone and we ended up getting a 50 euro taxi back to camp.

So when my project was finished and it was time to head to La Tomatina we were both ready for some fun. We left for La Tomatina on a Monday morning, two days before the tomato throwing was to commence and we figured ac ouple of days parked on the side of the road would not be a problem. We had also heard that there is a lot of pick pocketing during the fiesta and vehicles are commonly broken into. We placed ourselves on the far side of town so that the stream of tourists who come from Valencia in the morning to the fiesta and back to the train station, would not pass our camp on the sire of the road. We also managed to get some shade under a tree.

Before long we were joined by van of English girls, another camper van with a young vigneron and his wife from Marlborough, another van of kiwis and two more vans of Aussies. A car soon pulled up and a Scottish couple got out. It was party time. We had heard that the Aussies really love this event so we were no too surprised. The council had been kind enough to place 4 port-a-loos at the end of the street on some vacant land, so it seemed that everything was in place. For two days we owned the street and formed into a couple of large groups drinking and eating together.

As advised, we went to the council offices early and were the first photographers there. From the window on the second floor we watched the event build up. A group of young thugs positioned itself in front of the town hall and proceeded to drink and be loud and boisterous. As the crowd began to swell, they began to swarm around young men and rip their T shirts from their bodies. This is a ritualistic tradition at La Tomatina. Groups of young people entered the street with litre plastic cups of beer, or worse, Kalimotxo (pronounced Kali-moto), which is a 50-50 blend of coke and red wine (tastes terrible).

The crowd keeps coming and entertains itself with drinking, spraying water and ripping and throwing T shirts. A large greasy pole is erected with a ham at the top and drunk individuals attempt to climb the pole and pull down the ham. The crush can get quite scary. Gary, the Scotsman (from Glasgow) we had met at our street camp told us that it was just like a football crowd of bygone days and being a Celtic supporter, he would surely know.

At 11.00am the first truck made its way slowly through the crowd. Inside the truck were local people wearing green T shirts and were attached to the truck via climbing ropes. They were clutching arms full of soft, ripe tomatoes ready to hurl over the sides onto the crowd in the street. The truck eventually stopped and tipped the tomatoes into the street. Via the climbing ropes, the people inside were able to avoid being dumped along with the tomatoes. As the street dwellers gained ammunition the battle was on for young and old. It actually gets quite violent and the smarter participants wear swimming goggles to keep the tomato juice out of their eyes. A total of five trucks laden with tomatoes appear and unload their cargo into the street. As the battle progresses, everyone gets redder and redder, tomatoes over every part of their bodies. The street becomes a swill, a river of crushed tomatoes with everyone totally drenched and loving it. Young men are stripped to the waist, their outsides drenched in juice, their insides in beer.

The odd fight even breaks out but no one seems to care. Afterwards we spoke to the young Aussies in our street and they all told us that La Tomatina was far better than they expected it would be. All were delighted that they had come and experienced it. So were we. But it was actually a lot more violent than we had realised. It’s surprising that there are no serious injuries given the nature of the events. But every year the people come in their droves and go home happily covered in tomatoes.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 3:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.