Tomatina Festival 2011

The Annual Tomatina Festival was held today in the Valencian town of Buñol, Spain. Participants throw tomatoes at each other on the last Wednesday in August, during the week of festivities of Buñol. The good folks at Boston.com’s The Big Picture have provided a glimpse of what the event was like :

Tons of overripe tomatoes were hurled for an hour in a massive red food fight. The La Tomatina festival evolved from a street fight in the 1940s when a group of young men who wanted to participate in the “gigantes y cabezudos” parade used tomatoes from a vegetable stand as weapons. An estimated 40,000 people showed up this year for the food fight.

We’ve selected some of our favorite photos for the gallery below, but be sure to check out the entire collection at The Big Picture.