La Tomatina (The Tomato Fight)

What:  The world’s great­est food fight and the pin­na­cle for toma­to lovers and food­ies, the inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned La Tomati­na focus­es and pure unadul­ter­at­ed enjoy­ment, as 20,000 peo­ple from all over the world gath­er in the small town of Buñol and for the course of one amaz­ing hour hurl 120 met­ric tons of toma­toes at each oth­er.

While part of a week-long fes­ti­val that fea­tures pre-toma­to fight pael­la eat­ing and a water and wine fight in Requeña the night before and a series of after par­ties after the food fight, the La Tomati­na food fight begins with the release of a fire­work and the arrival of numer­ous trucks filled with toma­toes and for the next hour chaos ensues as the crazed par­tic­i­pants take no pris­on­ers, intent on turn­ing both the town and each oth­er red.

When: La Tomati­na takes place on the last Wednes­day of August each year, with the build-up tak­ing place in the week pri­or and the pael­la cook­ing com­pe­ti­tion tak­ing place the night before the toma­to fight.

Where: La Tomati­na takes place in the main square of the small Span­ish town of Buñol, which is 40km away from Valen­cia.

Dura­tion: The fight itself lasts for about one hour, begin­ning at 12 with the release of a start­ing fire­work – and for the next hour its toma­to pan­de­mo­ni­um – with a sec­ond stop fire­work release at 1pm to sig­nal the end of the throw­ing of toma­toes, after which the town square cov­ered in debris will be hosed down by fire trucks and the after par­ties will com­mence.

The fes­ti­val itself last for a whole week, with var­i­ous cel­e­bra­tions of food and wine, includ­ing pre-match pael­la the and the Requeña wine fight night before.

Tick­ets: Up till 2013 La Tomati­na was com­plete­ly free to par­tic­i­pate in, but due to its pop­u­lar­i­ty and the thou­sands of toma­to throw­ers who would over­crowd the town of Buñol crowd restric­tions and tick­et­ing was intro­duced, with a max­i­mum of 20,000 peo­ple now allowed to par­tic­i­pate.

For tick­ets, there are two main options the first being to pur­chase them in advance from https://latomatina.info/en/home/ for €10 and make your own trav­el and accom­mo­da­tion arrange­ments or to go with a guid­ed tour from one of the many Span­ish tourism com­pa­nies with both [https://www.latomatina.org/] and [https://www.latomatinatours.com/] offer­ing pack­ages that include access to both the fes­ti­val, trans­port, accom­mo­da­tion and invites to the many La Tomati­na after par­ties.

Need to Know: There are nine toma­to com­mand­ments for the fes­ti­val [https://latomatina.info/en/home/] which cov­er every­thing from what to bring and how to take part – but of par­tic­u­lar note is to wear old white clothes when tak­ing part and look after your valu­ables, with any­one with a cam­era con­sid­ered fair game for extra toma­to atten­tion.

More Infor­ma­tion: For tick­et pur­chas­ing, the nine com­mand­ments of the fes­ti­val and for arrang­ing trans­port and all things relat­ed to La Tomati­na vis­it [https://latomatina.info/en/home/] with both [https://www.latomatina.org/] and [https://www.latomatinatours.com/] also worth look­ing at for tour options and tips on attend­ing the fes­ti­val.