Winning lotteries

La Palma island seen from La Gomera on a clear day in October 

The following I found on Sheila Crosby''s La Palma blog:

''Lotteries are big business in Spain. And I’m happy to say that people do win – in 2012, 70 people in Breña Alta shared 7 million euros. Good luck to them.

The two big lotteries over Christmas are particularly popular, “El Gordo” (the fat one) on December 22nd and “EL Niño” (the child) on January 6th have extra large prizes, but your extra unlikely to win because they sell so many extra tickets.

I don’t buy lottery tickets, because I prefer to make my own luck. I also know enough about probability mathematics to know that the house always wins. Tickets for the big Christmas lottery in Spain cost €20, and your chances of winning are tiny.

One year my brother-in-law was celebrating because he’d won 250€. But then he bought about 15 tickets, and that cost him 300€.  See what I mean?

I think I’ve probably got a reputation for refusing to join syndicates. I have to stop myself from banging on about the remoteness of your chances. If you buy a ticket for the British lottery on Monday, you are more likely to drop down dead before Saturday than you are to scoop the jackpot. But some years ago at a Christmas dinner I bought two strips of tickets for €20. Now obviously the top prize was tiny compared to the €3,000,000 of the national lottery, but literally millions of people buy national lottery tickets, and this raffle had only about 50 people entering it. Besides, any profits go towards next year’s dinner.

And I won a prize – a ticket to the national lottery for 22nd December. I thought that was pretty funny – spending €20 to get exactly €20’s worth of something I didn’t actually want. It wasn’t until I was on my way home that I realised I could have swapped it for a bottle of wine. Never mind, I thought, I could indulge in a few day-dreams until the draw took place and reality set in.

Well blow me down, I won. No, not the €3,000,000 jackpot. Of course not. I only won €20, so I’m back where I started, except for the laugh.''

Luckiest lottery winner hails from La Gomera

A 57-year old man living in the south of Tenerife has just won 75.000 Euros in the Spanish El Niño lottery, but that's just in addition to the win of 375.000 Euros he won only 16 days before in the El Gordo lottery draw. Never mind, Jorge Gorrin the lucky sports car driver also won a  salary of 6.000 Euros per month for 25 years in 2006, and in the 80s he won 172.000 Euros in two draws, all in the ONCE lottery in aid of the blind. His sister once also won 120.000 in the El Gordo lottery, the largest-paying draw in the world.

He doesn't have a system for picking and buying lottery tickets and says that it is just down to pure chance and luck. He was born on La Gomera near the bay of La Rajita which is situated on the south coast between Valle Gran Rey and Playa de Santiago and where the now disused tuna cannery is located. His father died there when he was only ten years old and his mother then took the family to Tenerife to work in a hotel to support them. Later in life he worked as an electrician and as a fisherman, got married, had two children, got divorced after ten years of marriage, and fathered ten more children with 'other women'. He's known as El Rey (The King) and says: ''Work ? No way !'' 

La Rajita bay with the former fish canning facility