Why Are Food Throwing Festivals So Popular In Spain?

Spain is host to some of the world's most fun and crazy festivals - Events like Pamplona's Running of the Bulls and Castrillo de Murcia's El Colacho or Baby Jumping. But, what the Spanish seem to enjoy the most, is pelting food at each other, the most famous example of which is of course, La Tomatina. However, they have a few others that you have probably never heard of and if you thought throwing tomatoes at people was odd, wait till you read what gets thrown during these two annual celebrations.

Els Enfarinats

This annual winter festival that was last held on December 28th, involves a battle between two teams - A group of married men called 'Els Enfarinats' who take control of the village of Ibi, in Eastern Spain for one day, and impose all kinds of crazy laws that locals have to follow or risk being fined. Opposing them, is a group of vigilantes that try to bring back order to the chaos created - Of course, the only way to do this is to battle with them. But there are no hi-tech weapons involved in this epic struggle - Only flour and eggs that the two teams toss at each other with great abandon.

Though nobody knows the origin of this crazy festival, the villagers maintain that it is a 200-year old tradition that they revived, in 1981. The only bright side to the mess created not to mention the waste of perfectly good food, is that the money collected from the fines imposed by the Els Enfarinats, is donated to charity!

Didn't think that was crazy enough? Read On . . .

Jarramplas Festival

For this annual festival, which took place on Sunday, January 21st, residents of the town of Piornal randomly select a young man to be a Jarramplas or scapegoat and dress him up in a colorful costume that has a devil-like mask with giant horns and nose. Once he is ready, the youngster announces his arrival by beating a drum and then begins to run for dear life, as villagers chase after him, pelting him with hard raw turnips!

The best part is once again, nobody knows why, how or when this bizarre festival began. They speculate it was something to do with chasing down cattle thieves. As for the modern day reason? To chase away all evil spirits and just have some fun! We wonder what they will come up with next!

Resources: Dailymail.co.uk,huffingtonpost.co.uk, telegraph.co,uk