The 'Tomatina' Tomato Fight
La Tomatina tomato fight SpainSurely the worlds' biggest food-fight: every year around 30,00 people descend on the Spanish town of Bunol (in the Valencia region of Spain) to throw more than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other.
The festival is started with a ham-on-a-stick contest where competitors raced up a pole to retrieve a smoked leg of ham. When the ham is cut down, people put on eye protection and cry for tomatoes as trucks dump the squishy produce onto the village streets. They then proceed to pelt each other with them until all have been used up.
The festival on the last Wednesday of August is called 'the Tomatina' and is basically a town-wide tomato fight. It is thought the tradition began in 1945 when a fight erupted among two young members of a carnival crowd. A vegetable stall was nearby in the town square and every started throwing tomatoes at each other. Exactly one year later, young people met at the square, but this time with their own tomatoes. Another food-fight started but was broken up by police.
In the following years this practice was banned by the authorities, but due to popular demand was given official recognition in 1959. This was only to occur if participants would respect the start and the end of tomato-throwing being announced with a banger.
The San Sebastian Drum Festival
Drum roll, por favor! Take your ear plugs to San Sebastian in January, because its time once again for the infamous and deafening La Tamborrada. Prepare yourself to see and hear this sleepy resort town come alive with the sound of thousands of beating drums, all day and all night.
Spain is known for hosting some exceptionally wild fiestas, but nothing can prepare you for the high-decibel madness of La Tamborrada. It's a short but intense festival and it works like this: from midnight to midnight companies of perfectly uniformed marchers parade through the streets of San Sebastian playing drums and barrels in honor of their patron saint, the Donostia of San Sebastian. Talk about "loud as hell"!
The activity begins on the evening of January 19th at the Plaza de la Constitution and winds through all the barrios of the old city for the next 24 hours. (There is a brief break in the morning around dawn--just enough time to throw back a brandy and some churros). The different corps of marchers represent the many gastronomic societies in San Sebastian, and the competition is fierce.
As with many Spanish traditions, the origin of La Tamborrada is a bit twisted. It appears as though in 1720 a baker was filling water barrels from a fountain near the Iglesia de San Vicente. While filling the barrels he began to sing, and a group of young girls passing by started banging on the barrels as accompaniment. A crowd started to gather and this impromptu jam session evolved into the spectacle you see today.
Some years later the composer Raimundo Sarriegui scored the "March of San Sebastian," a series of drum compositions that are still played every year during La Tamborrada. At one point, the townspeople suggested adding words to the composition, but Sarriegui argued that there was no way to improve the sounds of the drums and barrels
La Endiablada (The Disguised devils)
A fiesta held since the 13th century only men born in the town may join the brotherhood and therefore take part in one of Spain's weirdest festivals.
The brotherhood has a Head Devil, a position which is held for life and his job as is the rest of the one hundred men who waddle about the town dressed up as devils, wearing a combination of pyjamas, a bishop's mitre and long bells over their backsides the size of cannon shells is to scare off Satan himself, distracting him with their exaggerated shows of emotion to keep him from attacking the purity of the Virgin Mary. They start at the entrance of the church, where they pretend to wash the statue of the town's patron saint, `San Blas'.
On each day there is a morning procession where the devils precede the statue in two lines on either side of the street carrying clubs which they continually shake. As the procession makes its ways around the church the devils in turn or in groups run straight toward the statue with his arms outstretched in an exaggerated gesture in supplication or offering.
All the time the there is the deafening and uninterrupted clanging of cowbells on the backs of the devils.
After the church mass the fiesta continues where the women of the village dance traditional dances.
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