A guide to some of Spain's quirkier festivals

Spaniards seem rarely to need much of a reason for a fiesta or festival of some sort and you can pretty much guarantee that wherever you are in Spain there will be some merrymaking going on somewhere in honour of a patron saint - I've decided to look at some of Spain's quirkier, slightly less known festivals and enlighten readers as to some of the stranger practices which take place at various times around the country.

Our journey begins in the east of the country in the town of Bunol in the Valencia region where a week long festival in honour of the town's patron saint, San Luis Bertran, ends in the famous "Tomatina", a two hour tomato fight where lorries bring in 120,000 kg of tomatoes for the locals to pelt each other with. It's all a bit of a free-for-all and it's usually girls pitted against boys for two hours of madness from 11am to 1pm. Participants can expect to get extremely messy and it's advisable to wear something old, and preferably red, if you don't want the stains to show up. Despite the "Tomatina" clearly being the highlight, there are many other facets of the festival to be enjoyed throughout the week with fireworks, parades and a paella cook-off amongst the most notable.

Not so far away in the city of Valencia, townsfolk revel for a week in the festivities of "Las Fallas", another one of Spain's more unique festivals. The raucous week of celebration takes place in March and is most notable for "Las Fallas" which are huge papier-m