Tomatina
The Tomatina is a festival that takes place every year on the Wednesday of the last week of August in Buñol (approx. 10,000 inhabitants) in the Spanish region of Valencia .
During the festival, to which thousands (around 45,000 in 2010 and 2011) flock from all over the world, overripe tomatoes are thrown through the streets in a harmless battle . The already over-ripe tomatoes are tons of truck tipped into the streets of Buñol, so run through the streets after the battle veritable rivers of tomato juice. The visitors are usually not Spaniards, but come as tourists from all continents, from Europe, America or Australia.
The center of the battle is the Plaza del Pueblo, where the so-called Ham Storming takes place at around 10 a.m. An attempt is made to climb up a waxed tree trunk about 7 meters high to get to the ham .
The actual battle starts at 11 a.m. sharp and ends an hour later. Throwing tomatoes is then no longer permitted; this is also observed as a code of honor . In order to prevent serious injuries, the regulations stipulate that the tomatoes must be crushed in your hand before being thrown. In addition, the suppliers are instructed to only provide overripe fruit. After the battle, there are helpful local residents who use a garden hose to free the tourists from pieces of tomatoes or mobile showers at the train station. It is also important that all comrades see it as a code to help clean the streets after the battle.
The Tomatina first took place in the 1940s. The tomato fight was invented for fun; it has neither a religious nor a political background. But supposedly nobody knows the exact details anymore. One version says, for example, that passers-by threw tomatoes at a street musician and he responded promptly by throwing the tomatoes back. Another version relates to a neighborhood dispute. There is also a variant in circulation according to which the first battle took place at an anti- Franco demonstration, which in turn would refute the non-political background. It is also reported that local residents got into a scuffle during a procession in honor of the city father.
The 2004 Tomatina of the Year was included in the Guinness Book of Records . 38,000 people pelted each other with 125,000 kilograms of tomatoes for an hour.
In 2005 and 2011 the Tomatina in Buñol took place on August 31st. Since 2004 the place Sutamarchán in Colombia has its own version of the tomatina.
In 2013, the number of participants was limited to 20,000 for the first time using a ticket system. 5,000 free tickets were reserved for locals, the remaining 15,000 were sold for € 10 each.
literature
- Christina Neder: 40 festivals in 40 weeks. From someone who set out to learn to celebrate . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86265-195-5 , pp. 144-148.
See also
Web links
- Official distributor
- Official Tickets bus to travel to la Tomatina
- Side of the community
- Experience report about the Tomatina
Individual evidence
- ^ Spiegel Online, Tomatina 2011
- ↑ Guinness World Records, GWR spotlight on Spain, Largest annual food fight (2007) ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ La Tomatina participation now costs money. August 29, 2013. Retrieved August 29, 2013 .
Coordinates: 39 ° 25 ′ 10 ″ N , 0 ° 47 ′ 26 ″ W.