This Owl considers that winning a lottery prize in December is the best Christmas present in the world. But that you win the prize of the biggest lottery on the planet is something incredible, a true miracle. And this happened to Perla Gaviria, a Peruvian immigrant residing in Madrid, who won 400,000 euros (about 425,000 dollars) from the ‘Gordo’ of the Spanish lottery, which distributes 2,520 million euros among 172 million issued fractions. One of those ‘wholes’ or ‘fractions’, as they are called in Peru, was the winning number 05490 of our lucky compatriot. The annual Christmas raffle is the main event on the peninsula. For something it is said that ‘Christmas begins on December 22, the day of the draw’.
READ: The owl at Christmas time
This raffle dates back to the Middle Ages and the orphan children of the San Ildefonso school are in charge of ‘singing’ the numbers of the lucky ones in a unique way. Last Thursday, two children, Alonso Dávalos and Ángel Abaga, who had been preparing for this moment all year, sang ‘Gordo’. In the Royal Palace of Madrid, packed with spectators, dozens of them dressed up as is the tradition, eager to win the prize, and millions who followed him on live television, the incredible took place. Right in the stalls of the Theater, a woman, Perla, a Peruvian unemployed for three years, began to cry. They had just called out her number. In an unusual event for the draw, the security services had to remove her from her to protect her from the harassment of the press and enthusiastic attendees.
Perla was born in Peru, but has been living in Spain for 20 years
‘Until three years ago I worked at the Government Palace, in the hospitality area. They threw me out on the street and now I was collecting unemployment insurance.’ The most amazing thing about her story is that Gaviria, the mother of two teenage children who lives in a rented apartment, did not buy just a fraction of the ‘Gordo’. Through all the provinces where she traveled, due to a certain situation, she bought a lottery ‘huachito’, which is why she arrived at the Royal Palace with 95 different numbers! that she had bought in several different parts of the country. ‘She had a feeling that she had to get here. In all parts of Spain, Valencia, Alicante, Barcelona, where I have been traveling with my children, I have been buying tenths (huachitos)’.
He recounted the crucial moments he experienced when they sang the numbers. ‘Since I don’t hear well, I don’t see well and I have a bit of a cold, I told my son to look at the number on the screen and he says now, now I’ll tell you. But I felt it’. Perla never stopped trusting in her luck and she was always faithful to the Madrid lottery. “Last year we came and I almost took the third prize.” And one of her children said: “We are very happy. We always come to the Christmas lottery with our mother. We’re going to buy a house at last’. With the ‘jackpot’ prize, her life has another meaning for her. “Apart from the house, this will give me to pay for my children’s university.” As a good Peruvian, she is a woman of faith and grateful to God. ‘Another part will go to the church. I am very Catholic’. Perla Gaviria is a hard-working woman, a good mother, blessed and grateful to God, and she received the well-deserved gift from her for Christmas. I turn off the TV.
