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They wear bright yellow and green bibs and pester you on the street and in bars.
They are the lottery-ticket sellers of ONCE, and they might make you rich – especially if you travel to Archidona to buy your Cuponazo. In the little Andalucian hill town last Wednesday (29 January), lottery punters won a total of €815,000 .
The actual ticket-seller who was responsible for the big one – half a million euros – was Daniel Moreno, who plies the calle Carrera every day with his electronic machine and his hand-held ticket board.
The maximum prize that ONCE can offer in its daily draw is €500,000, and Daniel sold it to a local person earlier this week. He also sold a further nine ‘lucky’ tickets, each of which collected €35,000 for its buyer.
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“It’s been my dream since I started,” says Daniel, who has worked the centre of Archidona for four years, “and now I’ve done it – I’ve made someone happy for life.”
Daniel claims to know all his regulars and, though his employers will not reveal the name of the big winner, he’s sure that he’ll learn it soon.
You might recall Wednesday’s draw – it was dedicated to the Chinese New Year. Asturias and Cantabria had winners, as did Madrid and Valencia. But nothing compared to Archidona.
ONCE – Franco’s charity for the blind
It is the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (the national organisation for blind Spaniards), formed in 1938. The letters form the word ‘once’ which is easy to remember, because in Spanish it means ‘eleven’.
Franco agreed to set up a lotto to generate money for blind people.
It employs today 150,000 ticket-sellers in Spain. Nearly all of these people have some kind of disability. The daily ticket (cupón diario) costs two euros, and there is a draw every evening, Monday to Friday. The most common prize is 2 euros, and winners usually simply replace their cupón with a new one.
All ticket-sellers carry scanners, which can check (‘comprobarYou can buy a ‘cuponazo’ (big ticket) for two euros, which is drawn on Friday evening. If you don’t want to wait, the vendors sell scratch cards that give instant results. You can also buy a ‘cuponazo’ (big ticket) for two euros, which is drawn on Friday evening or, if you can’t wait, the vendors sell scratch cards for instant results. As the Spanish say “¡suerte!” (good luck!).
Archidona – attractive spot in mid-Andalucía
Archidona is a white hill, which sits on the top of its hill. It looks like it’s a saddle atop a mule. About 9,000 people live in this town, which is 12 miles south of Antequera.
It has proudly borne the title of ‘city’ since 1901.
The rocky crag on which it stands makes it a natural fortress. It’s a natural fortress because of the rocky crag that it sits on.
Roman and Arabic in turn, Archidona became a Spanish Christian community in the year 1462, as the ‘Reconquest’ flowed eastward towards Granada. In 1980, due to its baroque architecture and beauty, the town became a Historic-Artistic Site.
No-one is quite sure where the name comes from, but two contending explanations are a pre-Roman name which translates as, ‘the place with the stone fence’, and the Latin Arcis Domina, which means ‘the lady of the heights’.
