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La Tomatina 2014: Spanish town hosts 'world's biggest food fight'

Video: The small town of Bunol near Valencia has become synonymous with a huge tomato food fight

Kiran Moodley
Thursday 28 August 2014 12:26 EDT
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Revellers take part in the annual 'Tomatina' festivities in Bunol, near Valencia.
Revellers take part in the annual 'Tomatina' festivities in Bunol, near Valencia. (Gabriel Gallo| AFP | Getty Images)

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The scene of a small town in Spain awash with tomato-juice drenched semi-naked individuals has now become an annual internet ritual.

La Tomatina is held in Bunol, Spain, on the last Wednesday of August each year and it is dubbed the "world's biggest food fight," with people from all over the globe travelling to this tiny Spanish town to throw over 100 metric tonnes of over-ripe tomatoes.

The event has become hugely popular, with between 40,000 and 50,000 people taking part in the fight in recent years. The town of Bunol has a population of under 10,000.

However, since last year, the event has become ticketed, limiting revellers to just over 20,000. A ticket costs just 10 euros. Bunol town hall spent 30,000 euros on tomatoes this year and dumped them on the streets for the one-hour long food fight.

While the fight is the main attraction, La Tomatina is a week-long festival involving music, parades, dancing and fireworks. The festival began in 1945.

Last year, revellers were spotted pelting rotten tomatoes at each other at Canary Wharf in London in an attempt to bring La Tomatina to the capital.

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