A TRAIN was held up for over an hour at a Valencia province station on Easter Sunday due to a festival on the track.
Locals in Buñol – a town better known for hosting the world-famous Tomatina, the biggest public tomato fight on the planet – traditionally gather on the railway line on Easter Sunday to eat monas, or typical cakes consumed over the long spring holiday weekend.
And the train driver refused to continue on the journey until the group had been moved on by the Guardia Civil.
Police did not disperse the crowds until they had finished their celebrations and cake-eating, by which time passengers had been waiting for over an hour.
Mayor of Buñol Rafael Pérez says the traditional Pasturar la mona festival takes place in the Roquillo nature reserve under a bridge through which the railway track passes, and the 4,000 or 5,000 villagers who join in tend to just press themselves up against the bridge wall whenever a train comes by.
In over 100 years, no train has ever had to stop and there has never been an accident, Pérez stresses, but says the driver on the Madrid-Valencia inter-regional line 'apparently got scared and called 112'.
It is thought that the festival returned to its usual site as soon as the train had left.
