Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Regrowth of plants is seen in bushland that was destroyed by bushfires, in Kulnura, New South Wales, 15 January 2020. (Photo by Joel Carrett/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Arcelia Aguilar, a resident of “Hogar Jardin De Los Abuelitos”, receives a hug from her niece Maria Aguilar through “El muro de los Abrazos” (The Wall of Hugs) which is a wall made from plastic sheets to protect against the coronavirus, in San Salvador, El Salvador on September 1, 2020. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

A reveller covered in tomato pulp takes part in the annual “Tomatina” festival in the eastern town of Bunol, on August 30, 2017. The iconic fiesta – which celebrates its 72nd anniversary and is billed at “the world's biggest food fight” – has become a major draw for foreigners, in particular from Britain, Japan and the United States. (Photo by Jaime Reina/AFP Photo)

Lava crosses the main road to Grindavík and flows on the road leading to the Blue Lagoon, in Grindavík, Iceland, Thursday, February 8, 2024. (Photo by Marco Di Marco/AP Photo)

A model presents a creation for Iris Van Herpen during the Women's Haute-Couture Fall/Winter 2025-26 collection show in Paris, on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Thomas Samson/AFP Photo)

It’s a classic tale of dictatorship gone wrong and the fight for freedom. Like in any good battle, there’s fire, albeit from firecrackers, but the ammunition in this one is – flour. It takes place in a Hemingway-esque Spanish village. The battle of “Enfarinats” in celebration of the Els Enfarinats festival, rages on on December 28, 2012 in Ibi, Spain. Citizens of Ibi annually celebrate the festival with a fight using flour, eggs and firecrackers. The battle takes place between two groups, a group of married men called “Els Enfarinats” who take the control of the village for one day pronouncing a number of ridiculous laws and fining the citizens that infringe them and a group called “La Oposicio” who try to restore order. At the end of the day the money collected from the fines is donated to charitable causes in the village. The festival has been celebrated since 1981 after the town of Ibi recovered the tradition but the origins remain unknown.

Photo: A Reveller smokes during the battle of “Enfarinats”, a flour fight in celebration of the Els Enfarinats festival. (Photo by David Ramos)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)