If you have watched the highly anticipated Heads of State, then you know that the film opens with Gypsy King’s ‘Volare’ along with delicious looking tomatoes amid people throwing them at each other in the background.
Quickly cutting to Priyanka Chopra, who plays television reporter, she says, “And with approximately 140 tonnes of overripened tomatoes, La Tomatina remains the world’s greatest annual food fight. Throwing it back to you at the studio, we’ll ketchup later.” While the food pun is on point and the festival painting the town red, there is a lot to discover with the food festival.
Here are five things to know about the food fight festival:
La Tomatina festival
La Tomatina is known to be one of the biggest food fight festivals in the world that takes place every August in Bunol near Valencia in Spain. The festival, which has origins in the 1940, sees people throw tomatoes at each other as they fight with the fruit, and has over time become a major tourist attraction for people visiting Spain.
The fight begins as soon as a person climbs to the top of a wooden pole where they have to get the ham down. While it takes its own time, it also begins when the water cannons are fired, and the festival takes place for one hour.
Number of people
According to latomatinatours.com, the festival didn’t have a limit on the number of participants earlier and got somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 people every year. However, the rule changed in 2013, as it became a ticketed event to accommodate only 20,000 people so that it doesn’t overwhelm the population of the city, which is about 9,000.
Tomatoes
The website further says that the tomatoes for the festival come from the nearby town of Extremadura, where they are cheaper. According to reports, the festival has about 150,000 kilograms of tomatoes that are used every year.
The attendees are also advised to not throw anything other than tomatoes.
Indian films
While the festival is popular in other parts of the world, the 2011 Bollywood film ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ is largely credited for making people curious about the food fight festival among Indians.
To make it look real, the filmmakers had flown in approximately 16 tonnes of tomatoes from Portugal, and that certainly led to a lot more people adding it to their travel bucket lists since then.
La Tomatina in 2025
This year, La Tomatina will be held on August 27, as it takes place on the last Wednesday of the month.