Expat’s lucky day
Winners’ joy in north and south Alicante in El Niño draw
THE BIG lottery draw known as El Niño on January 5 only left a few crumbs in Valencia region but these included second-prize winners, with the number 61.776, in Benidorm and Benijófar.
The most remarkable of these was a retired British man who won €75,000 on a ticket he bought from the same tobacconist in Benijófar that sold winning tickets in last year’s El Niño draw.
Although last year a local family had bought a whole series of 10 second-prize winning tickets and scooped €750,000, this year only one winning ticket was bought there. An employee told Costa Blanca News that the expat, named Gary, is a regular customer and at first he was not going to buy a ticket because at €20 each it is much more expensive than usual.
She explained to him that it is a special draw with many prizes and he decided to try his luck anyway.
Just like last year, shop owner Inmaculada Giménez Ortega was in Mass at the nearby village church when the draw was announced and again she started receiving phone calls and messages to let her know she had sold a prize-winning ticket, but it was not until Monday that Gary returned.
“He didn’t know when the draw was or that he had won anything,” said Sra Giménez.
“He got in the queue, which was long and as he got closer he saw that his number was on the signs and he went yellow, then white – he almost fainted!”
She took him to a nearby bank for a chat with the manager and he commented that afterwards he would need to go home and have a lie down so he could take it all in.
In Benidorm, one secondprize ticket was sold from Edificio Castellana III on Calle Alcalá, and at least one other from Calle Alfonso Blat de Manises, 4.
Valencia region residents spent a total of €99.27 million on tickets for El Niño, which is 5.54% more than last year and an average of €20 per inhabitant.