Alex Trelinski
THE world-famous La Tomatina festival returns to fill the streets of Buñol in a big tomato fight on Wednesday after a two-year enforced break due to the Covid pandemic.
130,000 kilos of pear tomatoes are being stored in a warehouse in the Castellon Province town of La Llosa.
They’ve been grown in the fields of Benicarlo, Ciudad Real and Hellin, and started to arrive at the Citrimed company warehouse last Saturday.
The tomatoes are matured and will be transported in six lorries on Tuesday on a 70 kilometre journey to Buñol in Valencia Province.
La Tomatina, which traditionally takes place on the last Wednesday of August, starts at noon.
The event has been classified as a Festival of International Interest for 20 years, attracting many non-Spanish participants and spectators.
This Wednesday’s staging will be the 75th- a landmark delayed for two years by the pandemic.
La Tomatina came about by accident in 1945 when a Buñol parade saw young people squeezing among the crowd to get a good view of some ‘giants’ walking the streets.
One of the parade participants was shoved over and lost his temper, trying to take it out on everybody.
The crowd was not impressed by his over-reaction and grabbed tomatoes from a vegetable stall which they threw at him resulting in the seeds of La Tomatina being sewn.
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