Thousands of revelers — including many lured by a Bollywood film — descended on a small Spanish town on Wednesday for the annual La Tomatina food fight, where they painted Bunol red with tons of overripe tomatoes.Loaded trucks plodded through the crowd with people in their cargo beds throwing tomatoes at the revelers — who, in turn, hurled them at one another. Their white shirts soon turned pink and red while pop songs blasted from speakers.At one point, police used pepper spray to disperse an area of the crowd, but a festive vibe quickly resumed.
Revelers are hit with tomatoes during La Tomatina in Bunol, Spain, on Wednesday.
The messy melee took place for more than an hour in the town, where buildings were covered with tarps ahead of the festivities.Held on the last Wednesday of August, the festival traces its origins to a food fight in 1945. La Tomatina became an annual tradition before Spanish dictator general Francisco Franco banned it in the 1950s. Televised media attention in the 1980s helped turn the festival into a national event and, eventually, an international attraction.
More than 20,000 people had been expected to take part this year. The Spanish news agency EFE reported that about 40 percent of participants over the past three years have been tourists from outside Spain.
