More than 20,000 people descended on the small Spanish town of Buñol for the annual La Tomatina tomato fight, a tradition that has survived a dictator's ban and now draws nearly half its crowd from overseas.
Loaded trucks rolled through narrow streets on Wednesday morning as revelers pelted one another with overripe tomatoes for more than an hour. A cannon blast signaled the end. Then came communal showers, hoses on the pavement, and stains on clothes that may never wash out. The town had draped its buildings in tarps beforehand, a practical concession to the chaos that has defined La Tomatina since 1945.
The annual food fight, held every last Wednesday of August in this town near Valencia, has grown from a local oddity into an international spectacle. The Associated Press reported that organizers expected more than 20,000 participants this year. Non-locals pay 15 euros, about $17.50, for a ticket. And roughly 40 percent of participants over the past three years have been tourists from outside Spain, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
Much of the international surge traces back to a single movie. The 2011 Bollywood hit "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara", "You Only Live Once", featured La Tomatina prominently, and the film introduced the festival to millions of Indian viewers. The effect has been lasting.
Romail Khokhar, a 27-year-old from Mumbai, was back in Buñol for his third time Wednesday morning. He first came because of the film. Mazhar Khan, 40, and Sanya Khan, also 40, made the trip from India for the first time, a goal more than a decade in the making.
Mazhar Khan told reporters after the fight:
"It was fantastic, absolutely well-managed. We are from India, and this is our first time being in La Tomatina. It has been a dream for over a decade."
Joanna Wytrzyszczewska, a 32-year-old from Poland, offered a blunter review:
"Way more crazy than we expected. We came because we were inspired by a movie. It was better than the movie."
That kind of word-of-mouth, and the global reach of film, has turned a small-town tradition into a tourism engine. Copycat tomato fights have popped up in Florida, London, Amsterdam, Colombia, and Hyderabad, India. None carries the history of the original.
La Tomatina started in 1945. By the 1950s, Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco had banned it. The festival eventually returned, and televised coverage in the 1980s helped transform it from a regional tradition into a national event. Today it pulls visitors from every continent.
One moment during this year's fight drew attention for a different reason. Police appeared to use pepper spray to disperse part of the crowd at one point during the festivities. No specific agency was identified, and no injuries or arrests were reported in available accounts. What triggered the response remains unclear.
Still, the day ended the way it always does: hoses, showers, and a town that looked like the inside of a pasta-sauce factory slowly returning to normal.
There is something worth admiring about a tradition that outlasted a dictator, resisted the urge to over-regulate, and still lets grown adults act like children for an hour every August, all for about seventeen bucks.
