23 December, 2013

By VIVA Team

Jubilant winners of elGordo receive the finest Christmas present imaginable

It had to be, really. In a year in which things got slightly better for the average Spaniard, 2013 was still a tough 12 months of redundancy, unemployment, job insecurity and money worries for many.

And nowhere more so than in the country’s unheralded towns and pueblos. Sure, the cities had it bad and the coastal resorts had to duck and weave in order to stay competitive, but it has been in Spain’s forgotten corners where the recession has been most keenly felt. Which is why the Basque town of Mondragón only recently hit the headlines following the news that Spain’s largest consumer appliance company – Fagor – had to recently shed 2,000 jobs in the town…

But this morning its residents were waking up to far happier headlines. Along with a gaggle of equally jubilant souls in Leganés, a far-flung working-class suburb of Madrid, Mondragons were cheering the fact that a lucky group in the town had won €180 million on the elGordo lottery.

As traditional as a British turkey at Christmas, the famous old lottery is a Spanish institution during the festive period, bringing cheer and tears of unbridled joy to the winners. And this year, there were no more deserving winners of the top prize than those from Mondragón and the Madrid suburb.

“I’m on cloud nine! I couldn’t imagine something like this happening,” one of the lucky Mondragón winners, José María Garai, told Spanish TV. “We’ve been in the press recently for so many unpleasant reasons, and for something which brings such joy to happen here is a real support for the people.”

Over in Leganés, a prize of €360 million was shared among a group of ticket holders, while a total of €2.2 billion in prize money was doled out across the country. Despite lottery spending falling by an estimated four per cent this year, it is still thought that more than 70 per cent of Spaniards took part in the draw, with millions obviously left disappointed that their numbers didn’t come up.

Still, nobody can deny that the big winners were worthy winners. In a year that has brought a chink of a hint of a ray of hope, good news stories like these are an incredibly uplifting tonic for a populace that has had to struggle with financial toil for so long.