Google Doodle celebrates 70th anniversary of Spain's La Tomatina festival

Search giant Google is celebrating 70 years of La Tomatina festival by dedicating its doodle on Wednesday to the day. The food-fight festival takes place every last Wednesday of August in the town of Bunol near to Valencia in Spain.

The animated doodle shows a bunch of kids enjoying the world's biggest tomato fight even as a scared kid is hanging on the pole. The splattered tomatoes create the letters G,O,O,G and E of the search giant's name while the pole denotes the L.

La Tomatina traces its roots back to the last day of August in 1945 when some young people went to the town square to attend the Giants and Big-Heads figures parade. Because of confusion, a vegetable market got involved in the a fight, with members of a furious crowd pelting each other with  tomatoes until the local law enforcement ended the fruit battle.

It was in the year 1975 onwards that the festival got an official status. San Luis Bertran, the patron of Bunol, organised the whole festival and brought in tomatoes that had previously been brought by the local people. Soon after this, in 1980, the town hall took the responsibility of organising the festival.

The number of participants since increased year after year, eventually leading city officials to introduce an entry fee in 2013 and limit the number of participants to aid their safety.

Tickets for the festival range from $12 to $75 and are sold by the company, Spaintastic. This year, 22,000 tickets were available. Almost 1,45,000 kg of tomatoes will be used in the festival.