[ DISCOVERY · THE DISPATCH ]

The Festivals I'd Rebuild an Entire Trip Around (Not the Ones You're Thinking)

Forget Oktoberfest. A man in a devil suit hurdling rows of babies, a town that pelts itself with 150 tons of oranges, and a tomato war that ruins white shirts forever. These are the festivals you'll never shut up about.

I have been hit in the face by a flying orange at roughly the speed of a bad decision. It was in a small Italian town, in February, and a teenager on a horse-drawn cart had taken personal offense to my existence and lobbed citrus at my head with the accuracy of a minor league pitcher. My sunglasses did not survive. I have never been happier.

Here is my unpopular opinion about festival travel: Oktoberfest is fine and Carnival in Rio is spectacular, but they’re the festivals everyone’s already going to. The ones that genuinely reset your sense of what humans get up to are weirder, smaller, and a little bit unhinged. These are the four I’d rebuild a flight around.

In the village of Castrillo de Murcia, near Burgos in northern Spain, there is a festival called El Colacho, and it is exactly as alarming as it sounds. Every June, during the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi, men dressed as the devil — in lurid yellow-and-red suits, faces masked — take a running start and leap over rows of babies laid out on mattresses in the street. Infants born in the previous twelve months, lined up, while a costumed devil hurdles them.

The tradition dates to 1620 and is believed to cleanse the babies of original sin and protect them from illness. The Vatican has, understandably, asked local priests to keep their distance from the whole affair. As a spectacle it is genuinely unforgettable: the tension in the crowd, the parents’ faith, the sheer leap of it. You watch, you don’t participate, and you spend the rest of the year describing it to people who don’t believe you.

This is the one that took my sunglasses. The Battle of the Oranges in Ivrea, in Italy’s Piedmont, is the largest food fight in the country and possibly the most committed act of collective fruit violence on earth. For three days during Carnival, teams of “commoners” on foot pelt “the tyrant’s guards” riding in horse-drawn carts with oranges — re-enacting a medieval uprising against a cruel overlord. Roughly 150 tons of oranges get hurled.

It is loud, it genuinely stings, and the cobbled streets turn into a slick orange pulp you can smell two blocks away. Crucial survival detail: if you wear a red Phrygian cap, you’re declaring yourself a neutral non-combatant and the throwers will (mostly) spare you. If you don’t, you are fair game, as my face learned. Watch from a balcony or behind the protective netting your first year. Then maybe, next year, you grab a red hat and wade in.

You’ve probably heard of La Tomatina in Buñol, near Valencia, but most people underestimate it until they’re inside it. On the last Wednesday of August, tens of thousands of people cram into the town’s streets and, on a signal, begin throwing 100-plus tons of overripe tomatoes at each other for one glorious, slippery hour. By the end the streets run ankle-deep in red, the walls are painted in pulp, and everyone looks like an extra from a crime scene played for laughs.

The rules are real and worth knowing: squash the tomato before you throw it (so it doesn’t hurt), no glass bottles, no ripping shirts, and stop the second the second cannon fires. The town now caps attendance and sells tickets, so it’s no longer the free free-for-all it once was — but that also means it’s safer and less of a crush. Wear shoes you’ll throw away and goggles you won’t.

For something stranger and quieter, there’s the tradition of effigy-burning festivals across Spain and Latin America, the grandest being Las Fallas in Valencia each March. For a week, the city erects hundreds of enormous, satirical papier-mâché sculptures — some five stories tall, lampooning politicians and celebrities — in the streets. There are deafening daytime firecracker shows in the main square that you feel in your sternum. Then, on the final night, La Cremà, they set nearly all of them on fire at once. A year of artistry, gone in a roar of flame.

It’s the rare festival that’s beautiful, absurd, and a little melancholy all at once — an entire city building masterpieces specifically to burn them. Stand close enough to feel the heat and you’ll understand why people plan their whole year around it.

Every one of these is the kind of trip you’ll be describing at dinner parties a decade later, which is more than I can say for most museums. The pattern: pick the festival first, build the trip around the date, book accommodation absurdly early, and pack clothes you’re prepared to lose. The world’s best festivals don’t ask you to watch politely. They ask you to get a little ruined. Say yes.

Quick Q&A

Which weird festival is most worth traveling for? For pure spectacle, Ivrea’s Battle of the Oranges. For sheer disbelief, El Colacho’s baby-jumping. Pick by whether you’d rather throw things or just stare.

Can tourists actually take part? At La Tomatina and the Battle of the Oranges, yes, with the right gear and respect for the rules. At El Colacho you strictly spectate — it’s a religious rite, not a participation event.

How far ahead should I book? Months. These happen in small towns with limited beds, so base yourself in the nearest city, confirm the exact date early, and book accommodation the moment it’s announced.

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