SAN FERMÍN

Los san Fermines son una fiesta que se celebra en Pamplona en honor a su patrón: San Fermín. Cominezan el día 7 de Julio con el “chupinazo”, y terminan con el “pobre de mi”. Su principal atracción son los encierros y las corridas de toros. Su atuendo es siempre el mismo: pantalón y camiseta blancos, y pañuelo y faja roja.

FIESTA DE LA TOMATINA

La tomatina es una fiesta que se celebra en Buñol (Valencia) desde hace unos 60 años. Consiste en lanzarse tomates unos a otros. Se celebra el último miércoles de agosto. Esta fiesta se ha ido haciendo cada vez más popular y su número de participantes ha ido aumentando de manera notable.

FIESTA DEL AGUA

La festa da agua se celebra cada 15 de agosto enla localidad pontevedresa de Viillagarcía de Arosa en honor al patrón: San Roque. La historia comenzó porque los romeros, que son lo que trasladan el patrón a la parroquia, pedía agua a los paisanos para refrecarse. En la actualidad, la fiesta consiste en mojarse unos a otros, e incluso los bomberos riegan a las gente.  Esta fiesta sobre pasa ya los 30.000 asistentes. Ha sido muy criticada pr el despilfarro de agua que se produce.

LAS FALLAS

Las fallas son una fiestq eu se celebran en Valencia del 15 al 19 de marzo. Su nombre proviene de la creación de figuras artísticas con materiales combistibles que se llaman “ninots”, que luego son quemadas públicamente tras un concurso en el que se elige al mejor ninot. Tambén es reconocido por los trajes que llevan, sobre todo las mujeres (falleras).

DESCENSO DEL SELLA

Como su propio nombre indica, la fiesta consisten ver descender las piraguas por el río Sella . Su fundador fue Dionisio de la Huerta, y esta celebración se hace en su honor. Se celebra el primer sábado de agosto, excepto si este día cae en número par, que se pasará al sábado siguiente. La competición comienza bajo el puente de Arriondas y finaliza, tras 20 km de bajada, en Rivadesella. La fiesta se prolonga toda la noche en ambas localidades.

Finally! The much-awaited photos from the Tomatina Festival in Buñol!! This was one of the first adventures I got to have during this trip to Spain, back on August 25th. Enjoy! (Psst… if you’d like a news clip from the festival this year, here you go! Maybe you’ll see me if you look close enough )

Me, pre-tomato madness:

“Ole, ole ole ole!”

Most of the locals covered their balconies in plastic, and enjoyed a great view of the festival from up above. Other locals tossed buckets of water down on the crowd from the rooftops, or sprayed people with water from the hose.

There were also plenty of costumes and “teams” with themes! I tried to capture the gladiator group with this shot, but I also seem to have gotten volleyball-helmet guy in here.

Tons of people.

Here come the trucks of tomatoes!

Josh and I, post-tomato madness:

There you have it: short, but sweet! If you want to know more about the Tomatina festival, a quick search on Google.com will give you lots of helpful sites (and exciting pictures). It was a great time!

Ortega y Gasset, uno de los tantos personajes rancios que ha dado éste nuestro mediterráneo país, citaba con gracia en La rebelión de las masas una anécdota que ocurrió en Níjar en el año 1759 sobre la proclamación del rey Carlos III y lo que hizo el pueblo luego. Dice así:

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“Mandaron traer de beber a todo aquel gran concurso, que consumió 77 arrobas de vino y cuatro pellejos de aguardiente, y cuyos espíritus los calentó de tal forma, que con repetidos vítores se encaminaron al pósito, desde cuyas ventanas arrojaron el trigo que en él había, y 900 reales de sus arcas. De allí pasaron al estanco del tabaco y mandaron tirar el dinero de la Mesada y el tabaco. En las tiendas practicaron lo propio, mandando derramar, quantos géneros liquidos y comestibles había en ellas. El estado eclesiástico concurrió con igual eficacia, pues a voces indujeron a las mugeres tiraran quanto havía en sus casas, lo que egecutaron con el mayor desinterés, pues no quedó en ellas pan, trigo, harina, zebada, platos, cazuelas, almireces, morteros, ni sillas, quedando dicha villa destruída”.

A lo que Ortega dice al final con sarcasmo aristocrático:

“Admirable Níjar!¡Tuyo es el porvenir!”

Resultan esperpénticas las fiestas donde la insensatez y el disparate predominan, describiendo a la perfección el acervo cultural de la villa. Los casos de la Tomatina en Buñol (Valencia), que suele anegar las calles de pulpa y néctar rojo, o de la fiesta del Jarramplas en el Piornal (Extremadura), donde un aledaño se disfraza de monstruo para que toda la aldea le someta a burlas y castigos con un remate de chaparrón de nabos; son fiestas donde el mundo parece ponerse del revés.

Aunque su origen no esté claro, todas estas fiestas tenían una cierta razón de ser, un sentido que atesoraban en su origen y que en la actualidad se ha perdido. Todas ellas mantienen una misma estructura: romper por un día los esquemas sociales del pueblo para luego volver a empezar, como si se tratara del fin de un ciclo y el inicio de uno nuevo. Pocos pueblos mantienen esa tradición, y aún menos las ciudades. En el fondo todas estas fiestas tienen algo de revolucionario, de querer destrozar los esquemas rutinarios y las estructuras jerárquicas tradicionales.

Tanto el Jarramplas como la Tomatina son la acción de toda la gente del pueblo contra un orden que permanece. Como estas fiestas están muy oficializadas y paternalizadas desde el poder para una pura contemplación burguesa, han perdido este carácter inquietante que tenían en un origen. Si en una ciudad ocurrieran durante una semana esta clase de fiestas, el descontrol se apodera de las estructuras jerárquicas y el mercado y el poder se resienten. Reivindiquemos, pues, el Jarramplas o la Tomatina para las ciudades y así deshacer la impostura rutinaria en que estamos subyugados.

This summer, the summer of my emancipation from state education and the birth of the realisation that recession + not wanting to work in a loans company call centre = three month period of unemployment, I embarked on a series of what I can only define as typical gap year experiences. I will continue to document these throughout the gap year, as now I no longer live alone, am losing my foreign edge and have acquired everything I need to keep me basically happy (flat, job, university place), I am going to embrace the typicality. So, festivals.

The first one was the Tomatina in Spain. I was sold on the idea of 14 friends and I having a villa just far enough away from Benidorm with its own pool, but apparently the main attraction was to get on the three hour bus to Valencia, spend the night in the station and rock up in Buniol at 5 the next morning to chuck rotting fruit about. Convinced it was cultural by the fact that it is only started when an idiot climbs a greased pole to touch a ham (I kid you not), 12 of us eagerly and naively boarded the bus, plastic bags of spare clothes in hand, and descended on Valencia.

One overpriced paella dinner later, two new German friends and a lot of furious comments made about the sadistic train station staff in Valencia who would let you lie on the benches but the second you closed your eyes would come over and bark at you in Spanish to wake the bloody hell up and stop looking like a tramp in their very smart station, we boarded the metro to Buniol.

The tradition of the Tomatina is to wear white, so it becomes a very strange sight to see thousands of tourists, mostly Australians, dressed entirely in white, sleeping wherever they fell on the hour long train journey. I distinctly recall being so tired as I crouched in the aisle of the train that I rested my head on a French man’s lap and napped as quietly and inconspicuously as I could manage in such a situation. Needless to say he was either too embarrassed or too tired to take issue with it, and for this I thank him now.

We arrived in Buniol to find the sun coming up and the festivities of the previous night ending. Because the festival has to occur in the morning before it gets too hot, most people apparently descend on Buniol the night before and eat sausages and drink sangria, thus avoiding the early morning rush. We wandered around the crowded streets, noting the tarpaulins thrown over the older, nicer buildings, and the complete absence of any shops or cafes that would let anyone inside, a sightly ominous sign of things to come.

The crowds were congregating around the aforementioned greased up pole, in such a density that observers from the balconies above spent most of their day chucking buckets of cold water onto the crowd, much to their continued delight. Once in the crowd, the water was indeed very welcoming, especially as most members, including myself, had failed to attend to their morning hygene rituals. However, before we had fully immersed ourselves and were simply indulging in an innocent morning vat of sangria, the force of the water being thrown from above knocked my drink out of my hand, and at this point in my tired state, was nearly enough to bring me to tears. Still, I soldiered bravely on, and after five minutes in the crowd it became completely normal to be standing on one leg, pressed against the British stag party to the front and the overexcited Australians in the back, shouting ‘aqua!’ at the top of one’s lungs, while desperately clutching at your friends’ (or in many cases, what you think are your friends’) hands, attempting to stay together in the heaving mess of a crowd. And this was before they had even brought the tomatoes out.

Eventually, someone must have touched the ham, and three lorries crept through the narrow streets, each with shadows of former people on them, grinning and flailing their limbs as they threw tomatoes as if their lives depended on it. I don’t know where you would find anyone who would willingly take this job, because going to the Tomatina is one thing, but to willingly fully submerge yourself in rotting tomatoes for up to three hours and enjoy every moment takes some kind of stamina I hope I will never know. Perhaps they were mental. Or just the organisers preying on the overtired. Either way, I would be intruiged to know the recruitment strategy.

The first tomato to hit me was still relatively intact, and smacked me square on the back of the head. Unfortunately this caused me to have something of a small mental breakdown in my tired and hungover state, and I, most sensibly, decided that I actually wanted no part of all this mess and what I would like is a sandwich and a nice lie down on a quiet pavement somewhere. Armed with two friends who felt similarly, we eased our way out of the crowd towards the metro, only to be pushed back by the police, thus returning us to the tomato doom. The smell was horrifically overpowering, and to this day I still find uncooked tomatoes offensive. Apparently further into the crowd, they were knee deep in muck and simply scooping it up in armloads and chucking it around like monkeys throwing their own feculence. Clearly my bitter feelings about that first tomato are still intact.

So while the others continued to cover each other in a smell so overpowering most of us have had to discard our clothes from that day, I bought a sausage sandwich and curled up on a pavement on what I later realised was the main thoroughfare through the small town of Buniol and waited for the rest our friends to emerge from the crowd and meet at our sensibly pre-planned meeting point.

I don’t really care to remember the rest of the day, but a few haunting images come back to me:

1. The colossal crowds of tourists waiting to get back onto the metro, clutching ripped and soggy metro tickets, and then the transport police packing people so tightly onto trains that there were people lying on the overhead luggage racks.

2. The trains having no air conditioning or windows, or indeed anywhere to sit, and having to endure the smell of eight thousand idiots covered in rotting tomatoes in the heat.

3. Gradually congregating outside Valencia main station, sleeping on the pavement precariously close to the road while eating felafels and shuddering in disgust.

4. Getting to the bus station to find that we had caught the last bus back to Calpe, the town of our villa, with only five minutes to spare, and the relief so intense that I shed a tear.

5. Washing. All. The. Tomato. Off.

My advice regarding the Tomatina now is to not go. I didn’t think it was worth it, but then I’m not into covering myself in shit. If you like that sort of thing, then wear flip flops, something over your hair and get someone to hose you down before you get back on the trains. Or move to Valencia. Don’t stay up all night, and drink a lot of sangria in the morning.

The second festival of my modest gap experiences was Bestival, a quirky ‘aren’t we different’ affair on the Isle of Wight, also known as an area of the UK with one of the highest old-people-and-leisure-facilities-to-anything-else ratios. I’ve been, I’ve seen, it’s weird. Because it’s the last festival of the season and takes place on the second weekend of September, its populated mostly by university students, gap year layabouts and families. Very nice it was, as well, apart from the epic journey down, which requires time to be spent in both Southampton (possibly one of the more depressing coastal towns the UK has on offer) and East Cowes on the Isle itself, which has fully embraced the punnery available around the Isle of Wight, and is full of twee shops selling crap called ‘Wight Elephant’ and such. Most irritating.

The festival, however, is lovely. Set in a nature park of sorts, relatively small at 40,000 people, which cuts down walking time between one’s tent and one’s desired grassy space in the main arena marvelously. It was sunny all weekend, and to add to the festival’s initial quirkiness, it has an annual costume based theme, which this year was classed as ‘outer space.’ While it’s normally exciting at festivals to see the occasional nutter in a banana suit, seeing at least three quarters of people there dressed up like complete tools was relatively entertaining, especially when one considered how much time and effort had gone into some of the costumes and, potentially, how little some people must have in their lives. That or they were bored and unemployed on their gap years.

Music wise, the Bestival was an incredible let-down, but a sign of its quality as a festival meant that this didn’t matter. I only recall seeing about four bands, namely Lily Allen (not my choice), MGMT (amazing but fell victim to the poor sound engineering so very quiet), Bat for Lashes (good enough to convert me to a fan) and Fleet Foxes, who were so good I had a quasi-religious experience and have been listening to the first album on repeat ever since. Which is all you need from a festival really.

However I will take a moment to pick a few bones with the staff. First of all, they put all the best acts on for Friday afternoon, which is ridiculous. We arrived at the festival, tired, worn, and weighed down by cider and tins of beans to the sounds of Florence and the Machine, only mine and festival companion Zoe’s favourite band ever, which was so disappointing we nearly cried. Then I learned both Metronomy and Passion Pit had already played, and all the good dubstep was that evening when you’re too tired to get into it. Foolish, Bestival, foolish. Furthermore, the sound quality was poor. I won’t rant about it, but it was poor.

Making up for the lack of bands available for viewing, however, were the numerous DJs who played all through the night in something like 12 different tents, which was fantastic. We saw Diplo, who was on top form as usual, and Jaguar Skills, who proved surprisingly good in a live environment. I couldn’t tell you the other DJs we saw, but all music genres were covered, particularly well in a tent called DaDa, which was less of a tent and more of a samba club from the 50s, where they played reggaeton and salsa till the small hours. We ended the festival eating vegie-burgers after dancing to an hour of trance in the curiously titled ‘Beatles XBox tent’ and drinking the free Vitamin Water being handed out by the best (and indeed, only) cockney 12 year old salesmen I’ve ever known.

Other exciting activities at the festival included:

1. A circus

2. A hip-hop kareoke event

3. A vegetarian cafe with polka band who, on the last night, descended into the audience to have a chat and then out of nowhere broke into a practised dance routine, with the cafe staff, for a full four minutes, much to everyone’s awe. It was like Bollywood.

4. Yurts, for those who could afford them.

5. A lot of enviro-crap going on, including daubing paint on big bits of paper in order to end poverty, and painting your face blue and taking an aerial photo to send to Gordon Brown to apparently hammer home the message that some members of the student youth are unhappy about the way the planet is going.

6. Multiple hog-roasts.

7. A food stall devoted entirely to mashed potato and condiments.

So Bestival receives my thumbs up, though I don’t know if I’ll be going again due to the extreme measures required to return to Oxford, including getting up at 6, waiting at the ferry terminal, dirty and shivering in the early morning sea breeze, putting up with seemingly every other ferry passenger purchasing and waving in my face a fry up (there is something I find so offensive about a fry up breakfast made on a ferry that I simply cannot describe) and a certain member of staff at Southampton station who will remain nameless, but the witch knows who she is, who refused to let us onto the platform to catch an earlier train and beat the post-festival rush, thus causing us to spend two unnecessary hours in the excuse for a functioning facility that is Southampton main station, on my companion’s birthday no less, tired and dirty. She attempted to use the ‘I don’t make the rules’ excuse, but when dealing with British Rail, I know she doesn’t make the rules, and that is why you rely on the sense of the individual to bend the rules into what most people understand to be a logical way to run a train network. But I’m not bitter about it.

Next up, the fascinating world of unemployment.

Por la mañana ya bajamos a 15 grados en Valencia. En Buñol más fresquito aún. Con el fin de las fiestas, la huida de veraneantes y estudiantes, la vuelta a la rutina de la gente y la venida de temperaturas más bajas y humanas, Buñuelogrado se queda sumido en unas agradables melancolía, tranquilidad y soledad. Siempre me ha gustado el Buñol pre y otoñal.
Creo que es el momento adecuado para disfrutar de imágenes del pasado. A ver si algún fiera de fotochop arregla el manchón de cubata del bono de 2000 pesetas. Que se noten los cursillos…

De nou un post de properes entregues, i es que no trobo una estona de pau i tranquil·litat per parar-me a escriure, vaja a escriure si (és el que estic fent ara), el que no puc fer és trobar una estona per esplaiar-me escrivint.

Total que uns quants temes més sobre els que aniré escrivint al bloc:

• Festes populars d’aquest país: dels castells a la tomatina, passant per els correfocs i els correbous.
• La premsa esportiva i la manipulació de les noticies.

De moment això és tot, salut i peles.

En un antiguo relato de ciencia ficción se planteaba que en el futuro el viaje en el tiempo sería no sólo posible, sino popular. Los turistas del futuro podrían hacer turismo “en el tiempo”. La familia protagonista, un matrimonio y sus dos hijos (niño, niña) se plantea viajar a la Crucifixión. Mediante estimulación del subconsciente por ordenador aprenden el arameo, el latín y las costumbres y cultura de la época. Mediante rayos UVA, maquillaje, tintes, peluquería y ropajes adquieren el aspecto de los habitantes de Judea del Año Cero. Las instrucciones de la agencia de viaje son claras: deben mimetizarse con las masas y hacer lo que todos hagan. Después de la preparación comienza el viaje y aparecen en el Jerusalén del juicio de Pilatos y del Via Crucis, cumpliendo a pies juntillas las instrucciones. Los niños, con su curiosidad innata e inquieta, enseguida se cansan de la escena principal y empiezan a desviar su atención hacia el interior de los edificios. Descubren que, a pesar de la multitud que jalea en el Juicio y en el Via Crucis de Jesucristo, en las casas hay gente. Avisan a los padres y se dan cuenta de que todos los edificios están llenos de personas atemorizadas en actitud de rezo, súplica y llanto. La conclusión es terrible: mientras que los Palestinos permanecían en sus casas sin comprender nada, presas del pánico y terror, Jesús era crucificado por la masa de turistas temporales, demasiado enfrascados en “lo suyo” y metidos en “sus papeles” como para poder ver la realidad.
Este relato ya hace años que me viene a la mente cuando pienso en La Tomatina. Por supuesto sin viaje temporal y con diferencias entre los buñoleros y los palestinos. En cuanto a los turistas, yo creo que los de La Tomatina son peores. Los buñoleros en vez de quedarse en casa rezando, se quedan plácidamente en la cama, se dedican a “dotorear” y a curiosear el ambiente o a hacer el agosto mediante sablazos a los “guiris” según la posición y la disposición de cada uno.
Con este artículo inauguro el “nuevo curso”. Bienhallados a todos.
Editado 9-9-09. He buscado en internete por si encontraba el autor del relato pero no. Casualmente he llegado a otro relato de turistas temporales en masa a la crucifixión. Aunque de corte diferente, os podéis imaginar cual puede haber sido su fuente de inspiración Se deja leer:
¿Cuál sería el destino preferido para unos hipotéticos turistas en el tiempo?

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SBS 6

Brandweer 2e Exloermond

I’ve officially been in Spain for a week, and so much has happened already! I’ll do my best to sum it up:

MONDAY-TUESDAY: The travels here were quite exhausting with delays at security, a Madrid metro line being closed, almost missing the high-speed train to Valencia, and wandering around trying to find our hotel at 12:30am in Valencia.

WEDNESDAY: Josh and I got up at 6:00am to go to the Tomatina Festival in Buñol – a city 40 minutes outside of Valencia – and got to experience the famous annual tomato fight. Huge dump trucks filled with tomatoes drive through the crowds of people, throwing the tomatoes and tossing more over the side for the people closest to the truck, and after a few minutes the streets (and all the people) are covered in tomato. It was a great time – until Josh realized his passport, credit card and all his cash had gone missing. So the rest of the day was spent finding the Guardia Civil to fill out a police report, taking the train back to Valencia, getting our hotel for another night (and cancelling the one in Alicante), looking up information for the U.S. Embassy and getting a hotel in Madrid.

THURSDAY: We got up early again to catch the earliest train to Madrid so we could go straight to the U.S. Embassy. Thankfully, Josh was able to get an emergency passport, and once he got to the U.K. he would be able to apply for his real passport and get another visa. After feeling much better about that situation, we checked into our hotel (which was fabulous!), and to celebrate finally having some things in order we got Telepizza for dinner – my favorite fast-food/pizza in Spain

FRIDAY: On our first day we had the option of sleeping in, we definitely took advantage of it: I slept in the entire morning. In the afternoon we visited the Reina Sofia museum to see some Picasso, Dalí, Miró, and many others, and walked through the Parque del Retiro. Josh got to try sangria and paella for the first time, and I had a delicious bowl of gazpacho (although I couldn’t help but think of the Tomatina, with the tomato-y taste!).

SATURDAY: Awhile after waking up, I decided to go exploring in Madrid, visiting shops and buying a train ticket to Valencia and Alicante for Sunday. I had lunch sitting outside a café, finally having time to enjoy Madrid and take it all in! In the evening, Josh and I took advantage of the free hours at the Museo el Prado and absolutely loved it: tons of paintings by Goya, Reubens, Rafael, and more. We walked to the Plaza del Sol and for dinner we got to enjoy croquetas, jamón ibérico, and – of course – sangria!

SUNDAY: At the lovely hour of 6:00am, I woke up and got ready to take the metro to the train station, and said goodbye to Josh (who was leaving for London in the afternoon). From there, I left for Valencia, where I got to meet Kelly – a fellow Spain Fulbrighter – for lunch. We sat outside at a café near the train station, mostly sweltering in the heat (it’s been around 85-95 degrees every day I’ve been here), but it was really nice to be able to talk about our experiences and expectations for the program with another Fulbrighter. In the afternoon, I took the train to ALICANTE – my first experience in the city I’ll be living in for the next 10 months! I checked into my hotel and then went exploring, discovering that Alicante feels an awful lot like Hawaii; there are even a ton of hibiscus flowers all over the city!

MONDAY: I got up today and decided to go looking for a cheap pension for the rest of the week, since I got my current hotel for its proximity to the train station (I’m lugging around 2 large bags, my backpack and purse) and its security/comfort – both very important to me right now, on my first time traveling alone. After marking a few places on the map, I left for the day. At the very first pension I stopped to visit, I met a nice old man named Ángel who offered to show me the rooms and even gave me a discount for the rest of the week. From there, I stopped to browse cell phones in a store called Orange, and then decided to go try to find the school where I’ll be teaching. From my first glance at the map, it didn’t look terribly far… but after walking for an hour in the heat, I decided I was wrong. When I finally found it, I was surprised by the surrounding neighborhood; it didn’t seem like a very nice area, though the school seemed very big, and they seemed to have a lot of playground space. Kelly also mentioned yesterday that the specification ‘CEIP’ (Colegio de Educación Infantil y Primaria) implies that we’ll have students anywhere from 3 to 12 years old, which seems like quite the range – but I suppose I’ll get to experience that soon enough!
Well, quite the “summary,” I know. Sorry it’s lengthy, but if you were wondering how things have been going, that’s been my whirlwind of events in the past week! Photos of the Tomatina, Madrid and Alicante are soon to come. In the meantime, feel free to send an email – I’d always love to hear from you guys   Un saludo de España!

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La Tomatina – Exloo / Drenthe

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De winnaars! Maar ja wat wil je met een Heinz ketchup-schort aan :O

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” La Tomatina” Exloo / Drenthe

Het tomatenvocht druipt nog langs mijn lenzen

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Midden en rechts: Alessandro Ballan en Robert Gesink (Rabo)  Dank je wel Jan K. voor de wielrennernamen

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Oortjes!

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Frank Schleck of toch Andy in het wit

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Doorkomst Vuelta ‘09 door Borger / Drenthe

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Bram Tankink

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Niet goed? Tikje sneller?

Ronde van Spanje 2009: Alexander Efimkin

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La Ronda Espanola: Matthias Russ – doorkomst Borger / Drenthe 17.00 uur

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64th Vuelta A España – doorkomst in Borger / Drenthe 17.00 uur

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De foto’s op deze site zijn voor het grootste deel in een zéér lage resolutie weergegeven . Veel foto’s (originelen) hebben posterkwaliteit.—-

Wil je weten of ik jou ook heb gefotografeerd stuur me dan een mailtje – rechtsboven in het scherm ‘KIEK – copyright’

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Olie op de golven …

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Une marée de plus 40.000 personnes a transformé mercredi le village espagnol de Buñol (est) en immense “gazpacho humain”, à l’occasion de la “Tomatina“, une traditionnelle bataille de tomates vieille de 64 ans.

Des milliers de persones participent à la bataille de tomates, le Tomatina Festival, le 26 août 2009 à Buñol, en Espagne Une marée de plus 40.000 personnes a transformé mercredi le village espagnol de Buñol (est) en immense “gazpacho humain”, à l’occasion de la “Tomatina”, une traditionnelle bataille de tomates vieille de 64 ans.

AFP – Pablo Argente

Des milliers de personnes au Tomatino Festival, le 26 août 2009 à Buñol, en Espagne Ils se sont lancé à la figure plus de 100 tonnes de tomates bien mûres, apportées par camions benne jusqu’au centre du village. La mêlée a duré environ une heure et maculé de rouge les rues de Buñol.

AFP – Diego Tuson

Une marée de plus 40.000 personnes a transformé mercredi le village espagnol de Buñol (est) en immense “gazpacho humain”, à l’occasion de la “Tomatina”, une traditionnelle bataille de tomates vieille de 64 ans.

Ce défoulement auquel prennent part, tous les derniers mercredis du mois d’août, de nombreux touristes, japonais, australiens, américains, britanniques, français ou allemands, a commencé à 11H00 (09H00 GMT), a indiqué une organisatrice à l’AFP.

Aucun participant n’a été blessé cette année et seuls quelques-uns d’entre eux ont été victimes de légères insolations.

Ils se sont lancé à la figure plus de 100 tonnes de tomates bien mûres, apportées par camions benne jusqu’au centre du village. La mêlée a duré environ une heure et maculé de rouge les rues de Buñol.

Cette localité proche de Valence a ensuite été nettoyée, en à peine une demi-heure, à grand renfort de jets d’eau et de balais et grâce à la participation des habitants.

La tradition de la fête de la Tomatina est née d’une bataille entre amis à coups de légumes à Buñol dans les années 1940.

Après la bataille, les participants, en majorité torse nu, se dirigent vers la rivière proche et les centaines de douches provisoires installées pour l’occasion, afin de se laver et se débarrasser de la pulpe de tomate.

La région de Valence, qui cultive toutes sortes de fruits et légumes, est considérée comme le verger de l’Espagne.

© 2009 AFP

via tv5.org

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Meerdere foto’s van de tomatina volgen…

Dankbaar onderwerp voor fotografen natuurlijk, die er ook massaal op afkomen, met het gevaar dat de (dure) apparatuur niet geheel onbeschadigd blijft. Vandaag was het weer la tomatina, het enige evenement waardoor het stadje Buñol, in het binnenland bij Valencia, aan de grote weg naar Madrid, (wereld)beroemd is geworden. Zo’n 40.000 mensen kwamen er vandaag op af, veel buitenlanders ook. Minder gevaarlijk dan het stierenrennen in Pamplona, zullen we maar zeggen. Al wordt iedereen aangeraden in ieder geval een beschermend (zwem)brilletje op te doen, want een tomaat in je ogen doet pijn.

Het begon allemaal in 1945, toen tijdens de dorpsfeesten enkele groepjes elkaar spontaan met tomaten en andere zaken begonnen te bekogelen. Ze hadden ruzie gekregen en grepen naar al het fruit uit een fruitstalletje dat even verderop stond. Het jaar erop wilden ze de ‘oorlog’ herhalen en namen de jongeren de tomaten zelf van huis mee. Zo ging dat jaren door, af en toe waren er protesten van de bewoners, maar in 1956 werd de tomatenoorlog officieel onderdeel van de dorpsfeesten en sinds 1970 is het de gemeente die voor de rode munitie zorgt.

Veel munitie. Gisteren gingen er 110.000 kilo tomaten doorheen, bijna drie kilo per bezoeker, als iedereen heeft meegedaan. Om 11.00 uur komen de vrachtwagens het dorpsplein op en lossen zij de lading. De tomaten worden speciaal voor deze gelegenheid gekweekt en hoewel ze lekker rood zijn, zijn ze niet geschikt voor consumptie. Om de andere niet te veel te bezeren wordt wel gevraagd om de tomaat eerst een beetje kapot te knijpen voor hem te lanceren. Na afloop is het de brandweer die de straten met een stevige straal mag schoonmaken.