La Tomatina The Worlds Biggest Tomato Fight

Tag : tomato
How does the world's biggest tomato fight start? Who owns the claim to fame as to having the world's biggesttomato fight? Nobody seems to be crystal clear as to how thisgigantic tomato fight got started. But it did, that's for sure. Itwould seem that people hold within themselves the need to throw food and have a great deal of fun doing it. Seems to me that to be involved in a huge, crazy tomato fight , just might be a real blast! If nobody gets seriously injured init, then maybe it just fulfills a nature desire that's in all ofus.

There's a sleepy little town called Bunol in Spain. Bunol is asmall town with a population of about 9,000. It's located about 30miles from Valencia Spain. Bunol holds the claim to fame for havingthe biggest tomato fight. Some say the tomato fight may haveoriginated after a heated discussion broke out, while two peoplewere dining and that the food just naturally started flying. There's a rumor that it startedover a really bad musician playing on the streets, that was peltedwith tomatoes to get him to quit playing.

This food fight is believed to have been started in either 1944 or 1945. Itis said that they had so much fun throwing tomatoes that it has continued every year since then.Twice the government tried to stop it out of concern for safetyissues. It was finally given the big go ahead in 1957.

What does it take to put on a food fight of this proportion? Lots of tomatoes of course. Were talkingin the neighborhood of 240,00 tomatoes or the equivalent of 140tons. Rest assured that these aren't perfectly good tomatoes, thatcould be used for food. Didn't you always wonder about that? No,these are damaged or spoiled tomatoes. They are trucked in fromanother small town called Extremadura, because they can supply alarge amount of damaged tomatoes. Extremadura has quite a largegrowing area of tomatoes and also manufactures lots of tomatopaste.

Celebrations start a week in advance of the La Tomatina with festivals of food, bands and fireworks. The size of thetown's swells to about 20,000-40,000 people at the time of thecelebrations. There's food and drink flowing.