Red, red, red...
2006-08-30 23:20
Bunol - About 40 000 Spaniards and visitors gathered in this eastern town on Wednesday to drench each other in 100 000kg of tomatoes in the annual Tomatina festival.
Madcap participants - including thousands of mainly British, French and German tourists - turned themselves into a "human gazpacho" in a riotous display of self-indulgence at one of the world's messiest festivals.
Most donned waterproof capes to stave off the onslaught of juice and pulp in a manic free-for-all believed to have begun life as an argument between two carnival participants in 1945.
In keeping with local tradition, the tomato throwers opened the fun and games on the stroke of midday, when five lorries piled high with the fruit moved into the central plaza of the town just outside Valencia, said an AFP photographer.
That was the signal for everyone to hurl tomatoes - which had been squashed up a little in advance to make them all the mushier - at all and sundry for an hour, turning the streets into a red pulp.
So popular is the event - which reputedly sprang from the ire of a would-be local serenader whose lute-playing found scant favour with residents - that Spanish authorities have recognised it as a "festival of international tourist interest".