La Tomatina

There is a village near Valencia called Bunol, where on the last Wednesday in August the locals celebrate by throwing a tomato festival. Somehow, this fruit fight celebrates the Virgin Mary, perhaps the origin of the Bloody Mary drink? In any case, if there is one thing that you do in your lifetime, try and do this.

It took us about 4 hours to drive from Barcelona to Bunol, along the main highways. Every 15 minutes is tolled in Catalunya, but once you enter Spain the tolls stop. The final extraction is 18 euro for the pleasure of being stopped by the border police. None of us were carrying passports of course, but the policeman was not interested in interrogating a mixed bag of Irish, Dutch, Catalan and Taiwanese citizens. I felt like asking for my money back.

We were staying in the village of Yatoba just down the road from Bunol. The village is one of tiny one-car streets and carts loaded with carob. The one shop there seemed to be located across from our luxurious B&B. I am still in awe of places with seperate towels for your body and your hair. It was here I discovered we were actually staying a few days, and having failed to tell my work, I promptly phoned and grovelled and begged and sorted it out.

Dani discovered that what sounds like "sin yellow" in Spanish actually means without ice. Apparently he has been going mad with customers in the bar asking for drinks "sin yellow" and pointing at the yellow ice bucket. The poor lad didn´t know what to do when he put the ice from the yellow bucket into the drink only to have the customers get even more frantic. He finally resorted to shouting "Yes I know it´s yellow! My t-shirt is red, and this is blue!" Having found out that it has an actual meaning, he proceeded to order all our food "sin yellow", confusing the humourless and reducing the others to writhing masses of tears and laughter. I think he likes his status of crazy man.

La Tomatina starts off with an all-night music festival. We wander down determined to enjoy the night before the fight, and within seconds I realise I am the only one dressed in shitty rags, as everyone else obviously intends to get changed in the morning. Oh well. I stuff a kebab into me and some surprisingly drinkable malibu and coke, and we explore the cobbled streets of Bunol. Everywhere there are temporary booze tent club things set up, with a funfair and guys selling goggles and clothes in anticipation of the revelry ahead. Some locals behind pig masks honk and snort furiously as they watch us pass and others bring out the kids for the night. At the end of the village we find an open air concert which is supposed to go on til 10am. They serve breakfast at 9 for all the visitors. We dance and I discover a set of swings just the right height for me and spend a good hour playing on it until some Italians come along and frighten me off by speaking to me in German.

The music´s good and we´re having the craic, but we start tiring eventually and Luis suggests going back to the car for a kip. Himself and Vivian manage to stretch out okay in the front seats but neither Dani nor myself are particularly short, so after realising that we can´t even fit into the car, we decide to find a nice bit of mountain under the fig and orange trees where we can sleep.

Sleep is predictably short especially when Dani realises he´s on the menu for a particularly ugly cross-eyed fly that he catches tucking into his arm. With a yell of alarm we are up and walking along the backroads just looking at the area. The mountains rise and fall on either side and the orange clay reflects the dim light of a hesitant dawn. At 9 we reluctantly return to the car to wake Vivian and Luis and head into the Tomatina.

The streets are packed and we end up in what turns out to be the main square of the event. I don´t feel so raggidy as now everyone is wearing old t-shirts and clothes. In the main square we find a telegraph pole has been erected with a leg of ham tied to the top of it. All the locals are attempting to climb it but it´s proving difficult due to the lack of grip from the grease-covered pole. Dani and Luis decide to try and I content myself with taking snapshots of my boyfriend being killed as he gets a boot in the nose, cheek and shoulders. Bunol is also treated to a long look at his lilywhite arse as one scoundral clings to his tracksuit bottoms. Eventually he returns, grimy, stinking, greasy, grinning. The locals are furious because an outsider eventually wins the ham despite all the underhand tactics employed by their teams of allied families.

At eleven o clock, the square is becoming frantic. The water that the locals have been throwing down from their apartments at us increases in volume, and suddenly I find my clothes are being torn and hurled at the cameramen. Shouts of "Tomatoes, tomatoes.." start filling the air and the next thing I know I am being squashed to the side of the square as a huge lorry of tomatoes pulls up and dumps its entire loads at my feet. First in is the bauld Dani, as I hang onto the bars of a window in desperation. But I get pushed down, and someone falls on top of me. Convinced I am going to sufficate, I bite him as hard as I can in the bum, and he gets up, quick smart. What the hell am I doing here, I think to myself. Five minutes later, I am laughing like a maniac and pelting tomatoes at the world like everyone else.

I cannot describe the sheer mayhem of a tiny town filled with 40,000 people killing each other with 130,000 kilos of tomatoes (that´s 6 lorries). Within one minute everyone is covered in tomato, as are the streets. The place is so jammed that you are hit with tomatoes non-stop pretty much from start to finish. Any poor guy who is taller than average or wearing a baseballcap or carrying a camera automatically becomes a main target. I lose my shoes within the first minute, and Dani runs over to tell me he had 100 quid in his sock but he´s lost it. I know he´s upset so I tell him to worry later and send him off again. He is a great shot and hits many of the cameras up on the balconies. I laugh uncontrollably all the way through, and realise I am having a great time. Where we are has 2 feet of mushed tomato, and I wade around on my knees looking for the unsquashed ones that have sunk to the bottom. I miraculously find one of Vivian´s flipflops. Then I decide to dump Dani into the mess, realising too late that he´ll mince me. Sure enough, I get thrown in, pausing on the solid surface for a minute before eventually sinking into the gloop.

Eventually fireworks signal the end of the fight. But we seem to be in the thick of it, and it goes on for half an hour or so more, before people lie back and swim or row through the mess. Dani gallops over with a smile the size of a mountain. He picked up some gloop to hurl at someone, and found 100 euro! And it is a different 100 euro note than the one he lost! I stare at the rivers of tomato being hosed into the sewers in despair. Still, at least we got our money back!

Trudging through town we stop only to have our photo taken by a woman safe up high in her apartment as her husband stands below dejected in his tomato trousers. Most of the street is already clean, and we have missed the showers. So we head up to the river and jump in, before heading back to the car and Yakoba.

Our clothes are absolutely destroyed and Einstein and me have to go get more in the store across the street. A shower reveals a body covered in spots from the acidic tomatoes, with the surprising news that someone (Luis) managed to put 6 whole tomatoes down my trousers, that my ears are still full with tomatoes, and that my hair will never be the same again.

Our first meal, and I kid you not, is spaghetti with a sauce that can only be made from collected tomato mush from the streets of Bunol...