Thousands of revellers took part in the La Tomatina Festival, world's biggest food fight, in the eastern town of Bunol, near Valencia, Spain, on Wednesday.
The annual tomato-throwing festival takes place on the last Wednesday of August. Revellers paint the town red by throwing tomatoes at each other during the festival. The tomato fights last only for one hour.
Last year, more than 40,000 people attended the world's biggest food fight. However, this time organisers reduced the number of participants by half due to safety concerns over the size of the crowd.
"This is the first year we are charging for access to this popular festival due to the need to limit the crowd for safety reasons," Bunol town hall said in a statement, according to AFP news agency.
"We have had a problem for the past eight or 10 years: La Tomatina is not controlled. We don't know how many people are going to come," Bunol Mayor Joaquin Masmano Palmer told Spanish media.
This year, for the first time, Bunol hired a private company to charge fee from the participants - a fee of €10, approximately ₹900, for throwing tomatoes at each other, flooding the streets with red tomato juice.
Participants also pay €750 (₹67,400) to get up on one of the six coveted tomato trucks that brought in 130 tonnes of tomatoes. Around 5,000 free tickets were kept aside for Bunol residents.
The food fight, which has been going on since mid-1940s, pumps in about $450,000 to recession-hit Spainish town. Tickets of the event were sold out days before the festival.
Majority of the people, who went to Bunol to attend the festival, were from countries like Australia (19.2 percent), Japan (17.9 percent), Britons (11.2 percent), Spaniards (7.8 percent) and Americans (7.5 percent).
Scroll down to take a look at the 2013 Tomatina Festival:
