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Revellers wage tomato war

Knee-deep in red mush, tens of thousands of revellers pelted each other with tonnes of ripe tomatoes in Spain's messiest summer party.

Police in the eastern village of Bunol - population 10,000 - said some 36,000 people waged the hour-long food fight, bathing themselves, walls and streets with 130 tonnes of fruit-turned-projectiles.

Television footage some warriors literally swimming in the fresh tomato puree, only their heads peeking out of the sea of red pulp.

It all started with a pistol shot at high noon, after which six trucks unloaded ammunition for Spaniards and tourists from as far away as Japan who had gathered for two hours to paste each in the decades-old battle called "La Tomatina".

Residents who preferred to watch from balconies poured water on the crowd.

Town hall set up 500 makeshift showers for the revellers to clean up. Others bathed in a river.

The festival, held each year on the last Wednesday of August, is said to have started in the 1940s when a clutch of youths began throwing their lunch at each other one day in a downtown square.

They met again the following year, this time pelting passers-by as well and giving birth to the now-legendary food fight.

[original article, gallery]

Posted by thinkum at August 26, 2004 03:42 PM