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Spain’s La Tomatina 2024: the fullest guide to the messiest festival
03.05.2024 - 21:35 / lonelyplanet.com
If it’s the last Wednesday in August, it’s got to be the world’s messiest festival.
In Buñol, Spain – 40km (25 miles) west of Valencia – La Tomatina festival is a wild, silly and very, very saucy tomato-throwing spectacle that draws 20,000 produce-pitching revelers each year. If you’ve always dreamed of throwing your, um, tomato in the ring, here’s all the information you need to squeeze the most out of this chaotic, one-of-a-kind celebration.
The (ticketed) mayhem takes place in Plaza del Pueblo (Buñol’s main square) and Calle Cid. At around 9am the palo-jabón – a large greased pole with a ham attached to its end – is hoisted into the air. A mad scramble ensues as people struggle against each other to pull it down.
At precisely 11am, regardless of whether someone has successfully grabbed the ham (which is rare), a firework provides a signal to parked trucks to start tipping over 100 tons of overripe, squishy tomatoes onto the square. For the next hour, everyone joins in a frenzied, cheerful, anarchic tomato battle – until a second firework signals the end of play.
The festival dates to 1945, according to the La Tomatina website, when a kerfuffle during a cultural parade in Buñol led to a market stall of vegetables falling victim to a fired-up crowd. Townsfolk reportedly revived the food fight the following year, bringing their own tomatoes from home. After the festival was banned in the early 1950s, a “tomato burial” held in protest in 1957 paved the way for La Tomatina to be recognized as an official festival. Since 2013, the festival has been ticketed to limit total attendance to a (somewhat) manageable 20,000.
Are still finding bits of tomato in your hair, up your nose, under your nails and between your butt cheeks for days or even weeks after the festival.
Most important: a change of clothes, including shoes. You can usually leave this on the coach you’ll take to Buñol; if not, bring a backpack-style dry bag. Buñol City Council now provides showers, so you can freshen up to a degree before you get back on your bus.
Pack a chest strap if you’re planning to film the action with a GoPro, as you’ll need your hands free for hurling tomatoes (or shielding yourself from tomatoes being lobbed at you). And a fully waterproof phone case with a sturdy neck strap for your phone – if you dare to bring it.
Wear old clothes and closed-in shoes with decent grip, and a pair of swimming goggles to protect your eyes – that acidic tomato juice can really sting. Ski goggles will also work, but these can be pulled off more easily. Leave your hat behind.
Outer layers commonly get ripped off in the fray, so we recommend that women wear a tight sports bra or a crop-style bikini top and a swimsuit bottom underneath, and that men
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