Buñol’s La Tomatina festival to charge revellers for the first time

Festival-goers at this year's La Tomatina are being charged an entrance fee for the first time

Having a tomato hit squarely in the face used to be something stage actors dreaded. Then it went away for a while, before returning in perhaps its, ahem, puree-est form – in Spain’s famous La Tomatina festival, held every year in the ancient town of Buñol.

As far as Spanish customs go, it’s up there with Pamplona’s running of the bulls, Barcelona’s all-conquering football team, and the Costa del Sol’s brilliant beach resorts as a sort of rite-of-passage pilgrimage for Spain aficionados.

But this year things are going to be different…

For the first time ever, the cash-strapped council of Buñol will charge an entrance fee for those visitors who wish to participate. The estimated 20,000 foreign festival-goers – mostly from the UK, US, Australia and Japan – will each have to stump up a minimum of €10 each for the privilege of looking a little pasta faced.

And if they wish to dodge most of the mayhem but still get stuck in, a ride on one of six trucks that trundle slowly through the tomato-juiced streets will set them back a cool €750.

Sound steep? For many it is, but for others it’s a price worth paying, and local company SpainTastic have been tasked with selling the entry tickets.

If you’re interested, the bad news is that most of the tickets are sold out, with 19.2 per cent going to Australians, 17.9 per cent to Japanese tourists, 11.2 per cent to Brits, 7.8 per cent to Spaniards, and 7.5 per cent to Americans.

The number of participants allowed into the main festival procession has been halved since last year, with organisers concerned over the size of last year’s crowds and keen for the first pay-to-play festival is a plum job for all involved.

“This is the first year we are charging for access to this popular festival due to the need to limit the crowd for safety reasons,” read a Buñol Town Hall statement.

”We have had a problem for the past eight or ten years: La Tomatina is not controlled, we don’t normally know how many people are going to come,” added Buñol Mayor Joaquín Masmano Palmer.

That may well be the case, but with Spanish daily El País reporting that Buñol Town Hall is currently in debt to the tune of €4.1 million, and the fact that the annual La Tomatina festival costs an estimated €140,000, one cannot shake the feeling that the town is trying to ‘ketchup’ on lost revenue…