Spanish town knee deep in the red

Revellers take a soak in tomatoes as part of the Bunol festival

BUNOL, Spain -- The Spanish town of Bunol turned red after tens of thousands of revellers pelted each other with tomatoes in its traditional fiesta.

An estimated 30,000 Spaniards and tourists hurled 120 tonnes of fruit during the hour-long annual "Tomatina'" festival.

Festival-goers were coated in juice and pips as they stood in knee-deep pools of tomato puree in the centre of Bunol, a town which is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) inland from the east coast city of Valencia

"The unique acid smell of the Tomatina tomatoes is in the air," Spanish state radio was reported by Reuters as saying.

No one was injured in the event.

"Bunol has gone completely red, from the people in the streets to the outsides of the houses and the ground."

Since it started in the 1940s the festival in Bunol, has attracted increasing fame and television footage across the globe.

Some locals believe the Tomatina began when a group of young people ran out of patience with a local balloon festival and opted to hurl tomatoes at the balloons instead.

Others trace its origins to a food fight between two families which got out of control, or a spontaneous tomato attack on an unpopular mayor.

A unique view of the Bunol festival-goers

Spain is famous for its off-beat, and sometimes cruel, traditional festivals.

In the donkey-squashing ceremony, the fattest man in the village of Villanueva de la Vera, western Spain, rides a donkey through the streets.

The animal often collapses.

The capital, Madrid, holds the burial of the sardine festival in which a model sardine is buried in a Lent ceremony dating from the days before refrigeration.

And in Manganeses de la Polvorosa in the western province of Zamora, a goat is hurled from a church tower.