Sep 15

Sep 15 La Tomatina: World's Largest Tomato Fight

There you are, crowded in the tiny streets of Buñol with a couple thousand of your best friends, tomatoes zooming past your head. You bend over to grab some tomatoes that have landed near your feet, you stand back up and BOOM… you’re hit in the side of the head. You wipe off your goggles so you can see somewhat clearly again and the fight continues.

I’d say that it is the craziest festival I’ve ever been a part of!

Some History of La Tomatina

It all started back in 1945 when a tomato fight was started at the Giants and Big Heads Figures Parade in Buñol, Spain. The fight was set off by some young men who got rowdy after one of their heads fell off and ended with the police having to break it up! Some young people went back the next year with the same intentions as a preplanned event and even brought their own tomatoes. The police yet again had to break up the fight. Each year the tradition grew in popularity and tomatoes until the ‘50s when the event was banned from taking place; But this did not stop people from doing it anyways. By 1957 it was yet again banned which launched a protest, including the tomato burial. This legendary (and quite petty) event involved putting a giant tomato in a casket and parading around the town, funeral style, until it ultimately paid off and the event was permitted and became an official festival. All of these events ultimately started the yearly tradition that has lasted through nearly 75 years to modern day. Thank you to the petty young people of the ’40s and ‘50s who kept this thing going!

My Experience

To start the day off, we met up with our gigantic tour group (about 600 people) at 6 am in the city of Valencia and took the 30-minute bus to the town of Buñol. Once we arrived, we took on the town by foot about 20 minutes into the heart to kick off the pre-party (aka sangria and dancing) and prepare for the fight. At around 10:15 we started flooding the streets (picture THOUSANDS of people flooding the narrow Spanish streets) and eventually located the ham. The Palo Jabón or ‘ham pole’ is literally a super tall pole that’s been smeared with tons of grease with a ham leg tied to the top. People try to climb it (mostly to no avail) to kick off the fight. One of my friends wanted to climb it so we wanted a good view of that.

At 11 the trucks were released, and the fight started! There were about 5 dump trucks FULL of tomatoes that were thrown out by staff. When it got to a certain point towards the end of the road it lifted and dumped the remaining tomatoes onto the ground for continued throwing. Don’t believe everything you hear about the tomatoes being overripe, these things were HARD, and some were even still GREEN. That made getting hit a lot more painful than expected but once they got broken up it wasn’t as bad! Once the fight died down, we made our way back to the entrance, which was a very messy journey since people were constantly throwing tomatoes at anyone within throwing distance. It’s said that around 150,000 tomatoes are used each year!

Once we made it out, we went to the “showers” which were really just some holes drilling into a pvc pipe with water running through it. You’d be very lucky to even get most of the tomato out of your hair! Once we were done with our “showers” we made our way back to the bus and took the journey back to Valencia.

Video Coming Soon!!

My Final Thoughts

I would 100% recommend this festival for anyone who is looking for an amazing time and doesn’t mind getting dirty! I had so much fun and met so many new friends from around the world because of it! I went through a tour company which I would also definitely recommend since they provided transportation and entrance to the festival as well as pre and after parties which were also a ton of fun!

Thank you for reading and happy traveling!

Date Visited: August 28, 2019