New Delhi: Google is celebrating Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the Spanish festival 'La Tomatina' with a colourful doodle on its homepage.
La Tomatina is the world’s largest food fights where people throw each other with tomatoes purely for fun.
Every year on this day, the last Wednesday of August, around 40,000 people pack the streets of the Spanish town of Buñol, near Valencia, to hurl each other with smashes tomatoes.
Usually, the celebration lasts for exactly one hour, from 10:00 am to 11:00 am.
During the fight, around 150,000 tomatoes are hurled.
La Tomatina festival is believed to have originated in 1945 when some young people went to the town square to attend the Giants and Big-Heads figures parade. The young boys decided to parade with a musician.
The energy of these young people caused one person to fall off the float. The participant flew into a fit of rage and started to hit everything in his path. There was a market stall of vegetables that fell victim to what soon became a furious crowd. People started to pelt each other with tomatoes until the local law enforcement ended the fruit battle.
The festival was banned in the 50s, but the didn't affect the popularity of the festival and soon it became one of the Spain's most popular show attracting thousands of tourists from around the world.
In 2002, La Tomatina of Bunol was named as 'Festivity of International Tourist Interest' by the Secretary Department of Tourism due to its success.
