Day 52 : La Tomatina Bunol

It is the day of La Tomatina (Tomato Festival), said to be the biggest tomato fighting event in the world.  Held in Bunol, a small town about 50km away from Valencia, it is the only time in the year filled with massive amount of people from all around the world.

I heard about this festival from an acquaintance about 3 months ago, and since it was happening around the time I was in Spain, I decided to plan my trip to Valencia around the event date, and get a first hand experience.

A couple of days ago, I had booked a seat on a special coach dedicated to transporting people to and from Bunol, instead of taking a public train option as opted by many locals.   There were queues forming at the coach pick-up point when I arrived, and managed to board one of the first few buses scheduled to leave at 8.30am.

It was just around 9am when we reached Bunol, and we could see people decked out in their gear ready to have a good fight!  They all seem to know where they were going, and so along with another friend (Sayaka) I made on the bus, we followed the crowd.

Vendors selling beers, sangrias, sandwiches, waterproof cameras, waterproof bags, goggles, t-shirts and many other things lined the streets, as well as a few “houses” dedicated to be safeguarding belongings, while one get wet and dirty in the main square.

So I bought a pair of goggles, and a waterproof pouch for storing some money and my camera before leaving my bag for storage.  We continued following the crowd, and without knowing where we were going, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a big circle, with topless people surrounding the circle. 

Some guys started making hand signals to us about having our shirts on and it was then we realised that we were in the middle of a shirt tearing zone!  We quickly pushed our way through the crowd and moved to the side to avoid being seized and literally stripped! 

I think we must have made it to one of the best spots in the house, as we seem to be in the action of everything – We were just next to the circle where people get stripped topless, and also in the t-shirt fighting zone.  This is when wet t-shirts start flying in the air, in the hope that it would hit someone hard!  I managed to get my hands on a few t-shirts and struck a few blows, but also got struck in the face a couple of times. 

We also got soaking wet as we were hosed (and it was literally a hose with a huge jet of water, possible similar to those use by firemen!) quite a few times by residents on top of buildings, as well as by people in a metal enclosure just 10m away from us. 

Wet bodies, many of which were topless males, were just all around us and everyone singing “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole”or just cheering on many occasions, awaiting eagerly for the start of the tomato fight.

It was only about an hour later, that I realised we were just 70m away from where the jamon (pronounced as “ha-mon”) pole is!  This is a tradition in La Tomatina, where a leg of jamon is hung at the top of the pole, and the 1st to reach the top to take the jamon will mark the start of the La Tomatina.  This took place at about 10.30am, and within moments, people were just climbing on top one another to reach the top of the pole. 

A few moments later, we heard loud cheers and realised that the jamon has been brought down.  We subsequently saw a leg of jamon and the guy I assumed who had brought the jamon down, being “passed” overhead through the crowds.

Everyone waited eagerly for the tomatoes.  At about 11am, we heard a loud horn.  Hooray!  It’s tomato fight time!  We saw a big truck making its way slowly through the road.  There were a few people on the truck pulling out tomatoes and throwing it into the crowd as the truck went along. 

I barely managed to get 1 tomato on this time and split the tomato into half.  I then rubbed the pulp on some random guy next to me before throwing the tomato into the distance.  About 10 minutes later, we saw another truck making its way.  This time we got more tomatoes, and we could start smelling the smell of tomato in the air, as tomatoes were being thrown around. 

This continued with another 2 more trucks making its way through the crowds, before we heard another loud horn at 12 noon to mark the end of the La Tomatina.  I was actually expecting more tomatoes to be made available for such an event, and one to be completely covered head to toe with tomatoes.  Well, I was definitely covered by tomatoes toe wise, but I think I got soaked by the water hose more than tomatoes!

 

The goggles were not much help either, as it narrowed my vision greatly, and was continuously fogging up.  I used it occasionally, just to prevent getting too much splatter into the eyes. 

Then the hard part begins… getting yourself out from the crowd and finding a place where you can clean up. 

We made our way out of the square, and this was the part I did not enjoy during the whole event.  We got so squashed in the crowd by people pushing from the back, that we could hardly breathe.  I didn’t even know if I was stepping on ground or on people’s foot and it was the push from behind that was making me move, rather than out of a willingness to move. 

On a number of occasions, I felt that I was going to fall flat as I couldn’t even feel the floor, but was kept upright because it was just soooo jam packed!

We finally made it out of the crowd and into the streets and started looking for a place to wash up.  We found some crew from the tomato truck cleaning up outside a house with a hose and asked to join them.  They were kind enough to use the hose to wash most of the tomatoes off from our hair and bodies, and shortly after we were there, people started queuing up behind us, waiting to do the same!  One of the crew even gave Sayaka his Bunol La Tomatina crew shirt. 

As our bus back to the city does not leave till 2.30pm, we hung around for a while and decided to take a walk around the streets and saw people either taking a shower in a river (which looked really dirty!), or getting hosed by residents in the area.

 

We stopped by to get a hot dog along the way and slowly made our way towards the bus.  There were still many people on the streets (some looking really dirty with tomatoes still on them!) just hanging around, drinking and/or eating or looking at the vendors’ wares, and reminiscing about the La Tomatina experience. 

It had been good fun, and I would definitely recommend for people to go and experience it for themselves if they happen to be in the area!