Spanish austerity comes to tomato-throwing festival

Bunol is bracing itself for a fresh eruption of squishy anarchy on Wednesday, when thousands of revellers will cram into the streets of the small Spanish town to join the famous annual tomato-throwing festival known as the Tomatina.

But this year, for the first time, the boisterous participants will be charged an entry fee of €10 in a shift that is being seen as a potent symbol of Spain's economic crisis and the financial malaise that has gripped so many of the country's cities and villages.

Held every last Wednesday in August, the feast attracts huge crowds of locals and tourists who spend a frenzied hour chucking truck loads of over-ripe tomatoes at each other. It ranks as one of Spain's most popular local festivals, along with the running of the bulls in Pamplona, and has spawned similar tomato-throwing parties in the US, Colombia and even China.

This year, however, the red-tinted festival comes at a price. For the first time since the Tomatina was launched almost six decades ago, the city has decided to demand an entry fee. The privileged few who ride into the mayhem on the back of one of the tomato trucks (and get to throw the first missiles at the defenceless crowds below) will have to stump up no less than €750.

City officials say the move reflects the need to limit the number of visitors and ensure safety, but they admit that there is also more pressure than in the past to balance the municipal books.

"The Tomatina costs us about €150,000, so with the new entrance tickets we will more or less cover our costs," says Rafael Perez, the local councillor in charge of the festivities. The city has sold all 15,000 available tickets in advance, with another 5,000 free slots reserved for locals.

Mr Perez says the new regime was brought in not least after the experience of last year, when almost 50,000 visitors packed into Bunol's narrow streets, many of them disappointingly far from the action. Safety, he adds, is the main reason for limiting the numbers and charging a fee, but concedes that financing local feasts like the Tomatina was easier during the years of Spain's building boom, when local councils were awash in property taxes.

"Everyone is doing badly at the moment," says Mr Perez. "But we have debts of only €1m compared with an annual budget of €8m. That is much better than most of the surrounding villages. We could still finance the Tomatina even without the entry tickets."

His assurances, however, have not stopped the Spanish media from warning that Bunol's new entrance limits mark a first step towards the "privatisation" of the country's beloved local feasts. El Pais, the daily newspaper, described the new regime as "a great metaphor for the economic crisis that is crippling Spain", drawing an arresting parallel between the bursting of ripe tomatoes and the bursting of the country's real estate and debt bubbles.

According to official data, local councils had amassed total debts of €42bn at the end of last year - sparking a funding crisis that has forced the worst-affected towns and cities to slash even basic services.

In the case of Bunol, however, the new entrance fee will not be used to pay off debts, but to ensure that the Tomatina produces an even more spectacular mess than in the past. "The more money we raise, the more tomatoes we can buy," says Mr Perez.

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