Michael Coy
THEY wear bright yellow-and-green bibs, they pester you in bars and on street corners, and they sit for hours in public kiosks.
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.”
He says that he knows all of his regulars personally, and though his employers won’t reveal the big winner’s name, Daniel is sure he’ll find out soon.
You might recall Wednesday’s draw – it was dedicated to the Chinese New Year. There were winners in Asturias, Cantabria, Madrid and Valencia, but nothing on the scale of 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’.
During the Civil War (1936-9) there was very little medical care available for blind people, so Franco agreed to the setting-up of a lottery to generate funds for this purpose.
Today it employs 150,000 ticket sellers all over Spain, almost all of whom suffer from some 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 (‘comprobar’) your ticket on the spot. 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
Sitting on its hill like a saddle on a mule’s back, Archidona gleams white in the Andalucian sun. It is 12 miles from Antequera, and has a population of about 9,000.
It has proudly borne the title of ‘city’ since 1901.
At 2,000 feet above sea level, it looks vertically down on the pretty agricultural plain which surrounds it. The rocky crag on which it stands makes it a natural fortress, and that’s why it has been in continuous occupation for thousands of years.
Roman and Arabic in turn, Archidona became a Spanish Christian community in the year 1462, as the ‘Reconquest’ flowed eastward towards Granada. Because of its beautiful baroque architecture, the town was declared a Historic-Artistic Site in 1980.
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’.
