A BRITISH pensioner who does not speak Spanish found out almost be accident that he had won €75,000 on the El Niño lottery, which was drawn on Sunday, January 6.
Gary, in his late 60s and living on the urbanisation Ciudad Quesada in Benijófar (southern Alicante province), was reportedly waiting patiently in the queue to find out if his most recent lottery ticket had won anything – as he often did – and started seeing that the number 61.776 appeared on several posters.
Shop owner Inmaculada Giménez Ortega says: “He went yellow, then white...then nearly fainted!”
“He didn't know when the draw was, and had no idea whether he'd won anything,” Inmaculada reveals.
To help him out, as he does not speak the language, Inmaculada took Gary to the nearest bank, a branch of Banco Sabadell.
Once there, she left him with the woman in charge, who speaks fluent English, so she could explain it all to him.
Ciudad Quesada and other urbanisations in Benijófar are extremely popular with tourists, holiday home owners and expatriates, the vast majority of whom are British or Irish.
And its nearest lottery shop in the town has sold winning tickets before, so Gary is not the first: exactly a year ago in the last El Niño draw, Inmaculada sold a full ticket, or 10 décimos, which won the second prize of €750,000 – a décimo, such as Gary bought, being worth €75,000 for the second prize.
Last year's winner found out they had netted the €750,000 prize whilst in church – having forgotten to turn off or silence their mobile phone beforehand, the winner was mildly embarrassed when this started to 'ping' constantly during mass due to a flood of WhatsApp messages coming through.
