Tomatin
Description:
In the last week of August in the city of Buñol, in the east of Spain, the annual Tomato Festival begins, dedicated to the outgoing summer. Like all Spanish festivals, this one comes with festive fireworks, music, dancing and free treats. But the tomato festival has one distinctive feature that attracts crowds of tourists to Buñol, this is the culmination of the holiday - the tomato battle of Tomatina, taking place in the city square.
The signal for the beginning of the battle is a special firecracker, launched on Wednesday at 11 o'clock from the city hall. According to this signal, several trucks appear on the streets of the city, loaded with the main characters of the holiday, ripe tomatoes, which are throwing projectiles. Participants of the holiday, and this is the whole city of Buñol, running under a hail of tomatoes to cars, grab shells and merrily take revenge on those who ran to the trucks first.
However, the target can be anyone in the range, the main task of the participants, who, by the way, are considered all, to fire tomatoes neighbor, and who they will be – not so important. Given that there are about forty thousand people taking part in this fun, and the number of shells is estimated at a hundred tons of tomatoes, it is easy to imagine what the city square and the residents of the city turn into a few minutes after the start of the tomato shootout.
During the two-hour battles, almost all bars, cafes, restaurants and any public places are closed, and special plastic panels are hung on windows and doors. The participants of Tomatina prefer reasonable minimalism in clothes, as it is difficult to stay clean on this day even outside the city square. The expression “tomato rivers”, often used when describing tomato riots, is not a red word.
The historical roots of this unusual holiday go back to the dictatorial rule of Franco. According to one version, throwing tomatoes at each other served as a symbolic protest to his regime. But most likely, a similar meaning tomato battles was given later, when the local holiday was already famous throughout Spain. The first tomato carnage was recorded in 1945, when at the celebration of the end of the summer in Buñol, a group of young people, recklessly or wanting to have fun, dropped a large figure of one of the participants in the parade, inside of which was the participant. Standing up, he did not appreciate the joke and began a scuffle, which his friends quickly joined. The clash took place near the shops with vegetables, and the tomatoes immediately became throwing shells. The police dispersed the fighters and forced them to pay for the spoiled vegetables, but exactly a year later they gathered there with their tomatoes.
Gradually, tomato shootings became citywide and, despite the discontent of the police, more and more people took part in them. In 1950, the local authorities did not interfere with the celebration of Tomatina, as the day began to be called. But temperamental Spaniards were not always limited to throwing tomatoes at each other, sometimes influential people fell under the distribution of vegetables, which led to the ban of the holiday in 1957. Frustrated by this, the Spaniards arranged a crowded funeral for Tomatina, where a huge coffin with a tomato was carried through the streets of the city, and the mourning procession, according to all rules, was accompanied by an orchestra and mourners. In 1959, local authorities were forced to lift the ban and recognize Tomatina as an official Buñola holiday.
At the same time, the rules for holding this holiday were adopted, which are still valid to this day. There are only four prohibitions: the beginning and end of the battle are strictly determined by a signal firecracker from the city hall; you can not throw anything but tomatoes, and the tomatoes themselves should be crushed before throwing, in order to avoid injury; it is forbidden to tear clothes on each other; you can not interfere with the movement of trucks with tomatoes. Thanks to these simple rules, no celebration of Tomatina resulted in serious incidents.
Until 1975, every resident paid out of pocket for their shells, bringing tomatoes with them to celebrate. And in the 75th to deliver "ammunition" began monks from the Order of St. Louis Bertrand, patron of the city. Five years later, the municipality of the city took over the organization of the holiday, which sharply increased the number of participants in the holiday and the volume of tomatoes scattered.
The tomato battles end with swimming in a pool filled with tomato juice and pranking the hams of a traditional Iberian pig. By the end of the holiday, the tomato mush under the feet reaches the ankles, and nearby houses, as well as participants, are repainted red. After the battle itself, the square is washed away, and then the Tomato Festival, the last festival of the outgoing summer, lasts for several more days.