What do baseball, tomatoes and a small Spanish town with name of Buñol have in common?
Nothing, you should think, but on one day of each year, Buñol, which lies about 25 kilometers west of Valencia, changes into a red colored tollhouse.
On this day, it is always the last Wednesday in August, the count of visitors raises up to 30,000, which is six times more then the towns population.
When I visited Valencia the first time, friends told me, that it would be close to the end of August, and that there could be only one reason for me to be here, visiting the city of the Fallas, “La Tomatina!”
Well, my Spanish wasn’t that good at the time, but I understood, that it had something to do with tomatoes. Good but, never were my thoughts that right.
Let me tell you something. After my visit to Buñol, I could not eat, smell or look at anything containing tomatoes for about a month. No Spaghetti Bolognese, no tomatoes with mozzarella, nothing that was red.
You can reach Buñol very easy by train from Valencia. There arrived, it is a short walk from the train station to the center of town. It really is interesting, seeing 30,000 people, trying to squeeze themselves into the center of a small town. On the other hand it is amazing, how many Americans, Canadians, Australians and travelers from other parts of the world take the sentence “When close to Buñol, than a must!” so serious. Funny enough, I haven’t seen any Spanish people trying to get to the center. Either, travel guides are rare in Spain, or they already knew about the chaos, that was about to happen.
All owners of the buildings in the center of town had their houses covered with huge plastic sheets. It looked like, that the whole town was going to undergo a major renovation. My friends told me, that those sheets were to protect the houses and that the owners had left Buñol for the day. Christo would have loved the place.
When a couple of drunken English bumped into my back and after a travel guide reading Texan stepped onto my left foot, I understood that escape
After reaching the center of town we positioned ourselves. At the lower part of the square, if you can call the being squeezed in between thousands of tourists a positioning. Now I was introduced to the procedure that would be held during the next 60 minutes.
When the clock would strike 12, 5 trucks, filled to the top with ripe tomatoes, would slowly drive through the center of the square and unload there goods. From that moment on, everybody is allowed to through around tomatoes at everyone.
“WOW!” I thought, “One hour!”
While I tried to figure out, how many tomatoes would fit onto 5 trucks, my eyes searched for that Texan with his travel guide. He an I, 120 tons of tomatoes. High Noon! Now, I was sheriff in town.
What I was worried about now, was, that the position I held at that moment, was too far away from the actual happening. Too far away from the tomatoes. At the fist stroke of the bell, I decided to leave the wall of a house I was leaning against and make my way towards the middle of the square.
This thought was easier than the task itself, because 1,000 Gary Coopers were trying the same. After 10 meters I gave up. Squeezed in and deafened by the hysteric screams of the people around me, I decided not to surrender the couple of square centimeters I just conquered. I would wait for one or two tomatoes, finding their way to me.
When the first truck came in sight, releasing its load, I gave up hope, to be able to thank the Texan for not being polite and excusing his misstep. All were having fun. All in a 10 meter radius of the truck. When the second one came in sight, the situation changed dramatically. If I really would have been Gary Cooper and if there wouldn’t have been so many people around me, I would have been able to take cover behind one of those wooden barrels in front of the saloon. Or, I would have jumped onto my horse carriage and driven home, with Grace Kelly.
But now I had to watch, how hundreds of tomatoes were airborne, making their way towards me and my neighbors. It seemed like that Texan found help in his American fellows and every Yankee chose me as a target.
Of course, my neighbors, or let me call them now, comrades, were in the same situation.
The first tomato hit my left shoulder, the second my left cheek. At this moment I hated my plan, giving up that save spot in front of the house. Only one thought kept me moving. Retreat! If there wasn’t a barrel I could hide behind, at least a couple of hundred bodies and a stone wall between me and the happening in the center of the square.
Two minutes and a few hits on the back of my head later I reached the plastic covered fortress.
One should think that the first hit of a tomato to my head must have reduced my ability of thinking drastically. As everyone knows, a wall gives you cover when you stand behind it. In front, well…
At this point of the story I’d like to mention, that baseball is Americas sport number one. Fathers show their sons how to pitch even before they register them at university. That means at the tender age of 12 months.
From that moment on an American child throws with everything that has the size of a baseball at everything that is worth targeting.
Now there I was. My friends all out of sight. I looked left and right. This also was the combination of hits at the wall behind me, followed by a shower of red liquid raining down on me.
Gary Cooper was gone. Far, far away on a pick nick with Grace. At his spot now stood a roman legionnaire who was surrounded by the inhabitants of an unconquerable Gallic village in the north of France and who was about to face the beating of his life. Tomatoes came flying towards that wall from all directions. Some finding a person, some hitting the wall and some falling to pieces in midair, raining down on the people as ketchup.
It was easy to filter out the Americans in the bulk of participators. With a tomato in their hands, they stood on an imaginary baseball field, checking the situation, aimed and threw the ripe fruit exactly the same way, a professional pitcher of the Boston red Sox would do it during the last and so important Inning of the World Series.
Bang!! And again, a hit victim wished having never heard of Buñol or at least, finding a family pack of Aspirin in his pocket.
I repeat. 120 tons of tomatoes, one hour and more Baseball professionals than the Major League could ever handle.
At one a clock you could hear a loud bang. The sign for the truce that would last for one year. A feeling of relief, followed by headache. Only then you realize how the whole place has changed.
Imagine the area of two soccer fields and the circumstance, that up to your ankles, you are standing in tomato paste. Thousands of people standing there, from head to toes covered with ketchup. Now, after the hour of the red battle, all of them tried to make their way home.
A slippery task. Keep in mind, that this happen at the end of August during midday, when the sun is pounding down its rays on you. A smelly situation. You fell like a hotdog in a ketchup bath. The organizers of this Fiesta prepared showers at the end of the town on a big parking area. About 100 meters of water pipe, placed on poles and releasing cold water out of the pipe every meter. The biggest open air shower in Spain.
But the problem is, that you need a special treatment for getting tomato seeds out of your ears and nose. Means, into the train, back to Valencia, down to the beach and into the water and dipping and washing and dipping and washing and…
It took me some days and showers in the morning when I stopped finding seeds after I got out of the bathroom.
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