La Tomatina: Celebrate 70 years of the the world's biggest food fight with the greatest splats

La Tomatina: Celebrate 70 years of the the world's biggest food fight with the greatest splats

Revellers are preparing to paint the town red to celebrate 70 years of the biggest food fights in the world.

La Tomatina festival sees around 40,000 people pack the streets of the Spanish town of Buñol to hurl 40 TONNES of tomatoes at each other.

The event takes place every year on the last Wednesday of August and lasts for exactly one hour, from 10am to 11am.

Around 150,000 tomatoes are hurled during the fight. The tomatoes come from Extremadura, where they are less expensive and of inferior taste.

The festival is believed to have originated in 1945 when a group of young men staged a protest in the town's main square during the parade of gigantes y cabezudos.

The gang grabbed tomatoes from a nearby vegetable stand and used the fruit as weapons, forcing the police to intervene and break up the fight.

The rules of the game are simple: Squash your tomatoes before throwing them; only tomatoes can be hurled; give way to lorries; don't rip t-shirts and stop when you're told to.(mirror)