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Thursday 9 September 2010

LA TOMATINA DE BUÑOL, A TRADITIONAL SUMMER FESTIVITY


In many Spanish towns, traditional festivities in honor of the Virgin or of a saint are held during the summer. And there are celebrations where the entertainment includes runnings of bulls or using bulls or other animals, as part of the fun and keep your traditions, something that I don't support at all, what is the point in keeping on doing these things? even for the animals and for the people (five people have been killed by bulls, so far, during this year in the running of bulls), though luckily these activities increasingly are been chased by most Spanish people.

However and on the opposite, there are many villages where people don’t need to threat animals just to have fun, one of those villages is Buñol. This town is in Valencia (in the Spanish east coast) and at the end of August they celebrate their “fiestas patronales” with a feast called “Tomatina” (that is, small female tomato).

This holiday was declared in 2002 as International Tourist Interest and this year it was its 65th edition.

For an hour there is a great battle between two sides, among which are shot 100,000 kilos of ripe tomatoes. In this struggle 45,000 people have taken part this year. And people throw tomatoes everywhere, even enemies or friends!


And when the battle is over, a cleaning device consisting of 60 people is responsible for cleaning all traces of the fight in an hour and a half, after which there is no trace either in the streets or in the participants.


Every year people from many countries come to Buñol to participate in this tomato-throwing battle, but this year some other visitors from the world of cinema have come: people from Bollywood studios (from India) to shoot scenes for the blockbuster "Only live once " and there has been also a delegation from Korea, which has been collecting information for his next " Boryeong Mud Festival! " in which people play with mud. Surely they will have fun too!

In case you want to read more about it, you can press in this link:

7 comments:

  1. Hola, Nieves. Congratulations(a little late!)on your blog in English. I will follow it through Google Reader.

    Colin Davies - Thoughts from Galicia.

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  2. Every time I see this I this is looks like so much fun!

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  3. Yes, it must be really fun La Tomatina Festival, perhaps we should try it next year!

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  4. Colin, thanks very much for your congrats and for your comment, although this has been your first comment I know you are there and we keep following each other, I send you my best regards and you are always very welcome here!

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  5. El festival se reportan cada año en Japón.
    Quiero verlo una vez.

    España es un país maravilloso.

    Gracias.
    ruma

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  6. Muchas gracias Ruma, la verdad es que la Fiesta de la Tomatina es muy divertida y popular, en otros lugares hacen fiestas similares, pero de barro, según tengo entendido. ¡Animate y vente a disfrutarla un año de estos! Un beso,

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Welcome and thank you very much for taking the time to leave the gift of your comment. Have a nice day!

Bienvenido y muchas gracias por dejarme el regalo de tu comentario. ¡Que tengas un gran dia!

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