In Ibi, a town in Alicante province, 28 December does not look like a normal winter day. Men in second-hand uniforms seize the town hall, fire blanks into the air and cover anyone nearby in flour and eggs.
Els Enfarinats has run for more than two centuries, but the latest edition in 2025 still feels strangely at odds with a continent that prefers safety notices and risk assessments to staged street chaos.
From Coup to Charity Day
Els Enfarinats sits within Spain’s Día de los Santos Inocentes, a day of pranks loosely comparable to April Fools’ Day in the United Kingdom. In Ibi, prank turns into full performance. Participants stage a mock coup under the slogan of a “new justice”, impose fake taxes on residents and businesses, and fine anyone who refuses to “cooperate”.
The money ends up in local charities, and the theatrical junta gives power back in the afternoon. The sequence repeats every year. Power looks arbitrary, noisy and absurd, yet it funds social work and restores the usual municipal order before evening.
For locals, the day has a familiar rhythm. Roles pass through families and groups of friends; the same streets become a fake war zone again and again. Children grow up knowing that once a year, uniforms and loud bangs belong to neighbours, not to distant institutions.
A Town That Plays with Authority
Modern Europe often wraps authority in careful language and polished press releases. Els Enfarinats strips that away for a day. The “rulers” shout, demand money and hurl food. No one pretends that the exercise serves anything higher than fun and fundraising.
That honesty may explain part of the festival’s appeal. Citizens live with complex laws, opaque contracts and distant decision-makers. Here, by contrast, power arrives face to face, absurd and obviously temporary. No one can mistake the game for real government, yet the game hints at how real power can feel for people on the receiving end.
The mock coup also remembers older forms of European festivity, such as the medieval “Lord of Misrule” or carnival traditions that placed servants in charge of masters for a day. Those older customs faded as politics grew more serious and police forces more professional. Ibi kept its version alive, even as its setting turned into a modern commuter town.
Chaos with Rules Attached
From outside, Els Enfarinats often looks like pure anarchy. Videos show explosions, clouds of flour and streets covered in shells and paper. In practice, the day runs on strict rules. Participants belong to a closed group, police and firefighters supervise, and first-aid teams stay nearby.
That blend of control and apparent disorder matters. Completely unmanaged street fights would end quickly through injury or legal action. A spectacle without any sense of risk would feel empty. The festival survives because it walks a narrow line between both.
In recent years, Spanish authorities have tightened safety rules around fireworks and public gatherings. Ibi’s event has adapted through controlled zones, stricter timetables and coordination with emergency services, whilst trying to preserve the impression of chaos for those inside the flour cloud.
Europe’s Other Battles with Food
Ibi is not alone. Across the continent, other towns still hurl food at each other in carefully framed bursts of disorder. In Ivrea in northern Italy, the Battle of the Oranges pits “rebels” against “tyrants” through three days of pelting citrus fruit, a ritual that recalls an uprising against a medieval lord.
On Greece’s coast, Galaxidi stages its flour war on Clean Monday, covering participants in coloured powder at the start of Lent. In Spain again, Buñol’s La Tomatina sends tonnes of tomatoes down narrow streets each August.
All three, like Els Enfarinats, combine play, mild danger and mess in a tightly limited frame. Residents scrub pavements afterwards; local councils weigh security, insurance and tourism income. Visitors see madness. Locals see one loud day inside a year of routine.
Why Ritual Disorder Still Attracts Crowds
The endurance of Els Enfarinats says something about how people relate to order. Many aspects of life feel heavily managed: workplace rules, social media guidelines, urban regulations. A festival that permits shouting, mock authority and public mess, even for a few hours, offers a release valve that does not require alcohol tourism or anonymous online abuse.
The event also links generations. Older residents remember barbed wire on nearby frontiers and military conscription. Younger ones know armies and police mostly through screens. Marching through familiar streets in costume, under watchful but tolerant eyes, turns serious symbols into something more human and less intimidating.
From outside Spain, the festival can look like an eccentric curiosity. From inside Ibi, it remains part of how the town understands itself: a place that can laugh at power whilst still respecting institutions on the other 364 days. That balance feels fragile in a world where mistrust of authority rises and public space narrows.
Els Enfarinats will leave its usual trail of flour in gutters and on balconies, and then municipal workers will wash it away. What remains is a memory of a day in which ordinary people seized official buildings for fun, raised money for social causes and reminded their neighbours that authority, however serious, always rests on consent.
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