When the village of La Bañeza in Castilla y León was engulfed in one of the worst forest fires in Spanish history, the rain came too late to save it.
But now the Christmas lottery has showered its 10,000 inhabitants with hundreds of millions of euros.
Villagers in nearby Villablino, where five local men were killed in a mining accident last March, also bought the winning ticket and are in line for a multimillion-euro windfall.
The fires that raged out of control around La Bañeza in August destroyed 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres) of woodland, killed three people and displaced a further 8,000.
Javier Carrera, the mayor of La Bañeza, said Monday’s win has produced “a cascade of emotions after such a terrible year”.
“Winning the lottery, as well as cause for joy and excitement, is something that has fallen from the heavens to a place that needs so much,” Carrera said.
El Gordo, or the fat one, as the Christmas lottery is known, consists of 100,000 numbers, each repeated in 198 series with each series divided into décimos, or tenths. Thus each number is repeated 1,980 times.
Each décimo costs €20 and the winning number pays out €400,000 (£349,000) for each decimo. A total of 117 series were sold in La Bañeza, equal to €468m to be shared among its inhabitants.
There are thousands of lesser prizes and the numbers are selected in a daylong televised ritual by children from San Ildefonso school in Madrid who chant each number and its associated prize money.
Among the many superstitions surrounding El Gordo is a tradition of buying a ticket in a place that has suffered a tragedy on the basis that lightning doesn’t strike twice and good luck follows bad. Now, after a terrible year, fortune has smiled on the unlucky residents of La Bañeza and Villablino.
