Human Ketchup: The World’s Largest Tomato Fight
Sat, Mar 29, 2008
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‘Here in Buñol we have never liked bulls. A bull’s horns can hurt you, but a tomato never does you any harm,”- anonymous
Image by Aaron Corey
Every summer the Spanish town of Buñol witnesses lumpy red carnage in the format of a massive drunken food fight, where approximately one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are hurled between tourists and villagers.
Image by Flickr user Puukibeach
The event is the culmination of a week long booze fest, named the ‘Tomatina’ and takes place on the last Wednesday of August beginning at around 10AM and ending at around 1pm. The rules are simple. Number one: smash a tomato into the nearest human’s face. Number two: don’t be naked whilst you do this. Number three: wear eye protection, and last but not least you have to stop throwing tomatoes after the final gunshot is fired – this signals the end of the festival.
Although this may seem violent, weird or wasteful – it’s actually not. The tomatoes, which are too ripe to be sold for eating purposes are bought for the festival and before being thrown they are squashed by the participants to avoid painful bruising caused by the oversized hard veg.
Having said this, there are still some minor injuries, the most serious of which occurred in 2002 when a woman slipped off the back of a truck and broke her leg. Apart from this, no major injuries or fatalities have occurred.
If anything, the most painful part of the festival is not the speeding tomatoes, but the huge acidic stench that they create during the fight, and of course, the town’s cleaning bill.
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“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else.”
April 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
100 tonnes of tomatoes have a more positive potential than being used for a primitive-like uncivil food fight. There’s some things in life that I won’t take seriously, but this isn’t one. Juxtapose a picture of this food fight with one of people starving of hunger. What do you get? A depiction of the idiocity of humanity.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Read the article. “Although this may seem violent, weird or wasteful – it’s actually not. The tomatoes, which are too ripe to be sold for eating purposes are bought for the festival …” They’re unsuitable as food. They might serve other uses, such as compost material, but this seems like a good idea, too.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
This would be hilarious to watch in person. I am not sure if I would want to join it even though I have always wanted to have a food fight, this just looks gross.