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