The tomato festival or also known as La Tomatina, started out on the last Wednesday, August 1945. It started out unexpectedly as some youngsters spent some time at the town square. They were there to see the Big Heads and Giants figure parade. These energetic boys decided that they want to take part in the parade and then incidentally knock off a participant.
This cause rage in the participant who fell off. He then hit everything in front of him. When he was in front of a vegetable stall, he smashed the stall and then started to throw everything in front of him, which was at that time tomato. This triggered other people to throw tomatoes to and then the vegetable battle started.
The next year, the young people would like to redo the vegetable fight. They picked up a fight on purpose with tomatoes in their pockets that they brought from home. The young boys do not realize that they started a history and that this fight will one day became a tradition. The police break the tomato fight and the tomato festival was banned in the early 50s. But this did not stop the tomato fight participants, even though they were arrested. On the contrary, there seemed to be more and more people enjoy the fight and more and more people came the next year and they year afterwards.
In 1957, the festival was once again canceled by the police and to protest this cancellation, the mass created a giant tomato and put it in to coffin to be buried. As the protest was covered in much news, it was even more popular than before and increasing the number of participants from year to year until it was not longer able to be contained. Finally, in 2002, the government of Spain acknowledges the tomato festival and even made it a national festival that is able to attract international tourists from year to year.
Now, for the first time in 6 decades, the participants who want to taka part of the annual tomato festival must pay, following the country’s economic crisis. However, the mayor of the city stated that this is also one of the ways to control the festival. The charge is 10 Euros. As for those participants, hoping to be able to get the tomatoes from the trucks, they must pay more, way more. They have to pay as much as 750 Euros for this privilege.
