So you’re probably wondering why tomatoes and why the town of Buñol? There are many theories about how this food fight we call La Tomatina started.

The most popular belief is that a tomato fight between rival gangs broke out on the last Wednesday in August, way back in the 1940s. The next year on the last Wednesday in August, the youths gathered in the streets of Buñol for a re-match — and the annual tomato battle was born.

In the 1980s the town’s council began providing truckloads of tomatoes from the surrounding countryside, and since then La Tomatina has gone from strength to strength. The festival now attracts people from all over the globe — almost 40,000 of them, in fact.

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