Why are all these people dirty, in the public square?
Tomatina is not the only festival in Spain -- turns out the Spanish are just crazy about wacky festivals and here is another glorious one, Cascamorras.
It's so new that Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on it! There's an
official website, but the Spanish is so deep there that even Babelfish doesn't really translate.
I found other sites on it
here, and
here, the translations are so horrible that I can only piece together what's happening. I'll probably get it wrong, but here goes.
It seems there are two otherwise unnotable towns, Baza and Guadix. They fight over possession of this statue, the "Virgin of Piedad". They've fought over it for five centuries.
Every year, Guadix sends a team of representatives to Baza in an attempt to get the statue. These representatives are the "Cascamorras". People of Baza wait for the Cascamorras with a big bag of dirt, tinted water, and eggs.
The idea is that if the Cascamorras is not perfectly clean, it doesn't gain possession of the statue - so the Baza team tries to dirty the Cascamorras at all costs.
At intervals, there is an opportunity for the Cascamorras to wave the flag, clean off in fountains, and start over.
Every year the Cascamorras fails to capture the statue, and so every year it must return home to Guadix... where, in its shame, it's again smeared with tinted water and eggs and filth.
Unfortunately it's not clear from the photos which section of the festival is shown, and which side is which, etc. Looks like a glorious opportunity to get dirty... and clean... and dirty again.
