arts & culture

There are food fights, and then there’s La Tomatina. Every year, the Valencian town of Buñol turns itself into a battlefield of red as thousands of people come together to pelt one another with tomatoes in one of the nation’s messiest traditions.

The festival began accidentally in 1945, when a fight during a parade spilled over into a nearby vegetable stall and tomatoes flew into the crowd. People came back the following year to do exactly the same thing, and despite periodic attempts to ban it, the tradition stuck. Today, La Tomatina attracts visitors from around the world for an hour of spectacular tomato throwing.

Kaur Tours is organising the day trip, taking you from Barcelona to Buñol and back. So all you need to do is think about sensible priorities like wearing old clothes, protecting your phone and accepting that absolutely everything will end up covered in tomato.