Jim McMahon

Food fights aren’t allowed in your school cafeteria, but they’re part of a yearly tradition in Buñol, Spain. Each August, the city hosts La Tomatina, the world’s largest tomato fight. This year, trucks brought more than 160 tons of overripe tomatoes into the streets for 20,000 people to fling at one another. The festival dates back to the 1940s, though nobody knows for sure how it got started. One popular legend is that some boys at a parade in Buñol began throwing tomatoes at city officials in protest of dictator Francisco Franco’s reign following Spain’s civil war (1936-39). What is certain is that the tomato fight managed to grow into an annual tradition, despite Franco banning it several times in the 1950s. Today, people from all over the world travel to the small town to paint the streets—and each other—red with tomato juice.