By IANS
Buñol : Over 40,000 people, many of them foreign tourists, participated in the hard-fought annual tomato-throwing battle in this small town in eastern Spain.
This year’s edition of the world famous “Tomatina” Wednesday set an attendance record of 40,000 participants, not to mention requiring about 117,000 kg of tomatoes, said the Spanish news agency EFE.
The massive attendance surprised the organizers, though they had predicted an increase in participation for this edition of the event because more parking places had been set up in and near the town and 7.7 tonnes more of tomatoes had been ordered this year.
The Tomatina is being celebrated for more than 60 years on the last Wednesday of August.
Although there is some disagreement over the origin of this 61-year-old party, according to the most accepted version, a group of friends began the tradition by starting a tomato fight in the town’s main square as a parade of papier mache “giants” passed by.
The peculiar battle draws “adversaries” to Buñol from countries all over the world, but especially from Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Australia, the US, Canada, Italy, France and Germany.
The tomato fight begins at 11 a.m. with a unanimous “war cry” shouted by all participants, who don’t stop energetically hurling the tomatoes at one another until their “ammunition” runs out.
In just an hour of furious activity, every last participant – and even those who dare peek out of their windows to get a look at the spectacle – is covered in red, juicy mush from the ripe tomatoes, which are carried into town for the fest in five large dump trucks.
The cooperative charged with supplying the tomatoes to Buñol for the Tomatina is also responsible for ensuring that only soft, overripe tomatoes are provided to the participants, although there are always some unripe green ones that get mixed in and strike some unfortunate people with unexpected force.
Wednesday’s Tomatina, though, concluded without any serious incidents and only about a dozen of the warriors had to be treated for minor injuries, most of them consisting of slight injuries to their eyes.