Entire Spanish Town Wins $950m Lottery – Except One Guy

Huffington Post–  One man in Spain is kicking himself after the entire town won and shared in a $950-million lottery jackpot — except for him.  The New York Times reported on Tuesday that roughly 70 households in Sodeto bought winning tickets for Spain’s Christmas lottery.  But one man, filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis, had been overlooked when a town homemakers group made the rounds selling lottery tickets to raise money last year.  Every household that bought a share in the drawing takes home at least $130,000, Newser reported.  The lottery is called “El Gordo” and has been a Spanish staple for the last 200 years. Today, tickets go for $26 a pop. Sodeto residents and people from 17 nearby villages bought tickets with the same winning number from the civic group. Their jackpot pumped $150 million in winnings into the area. A single ticket paid out $520,000.  Mitsotakis told the Times that he was sad he didn’t win anything. But he did get one lucky break out of it. A neighbor bought a big chunk of land that Mitsotakis had been trying to sell.  Sodeto is northeast of Madrid with a population of 250 people, largely comprised of farmers and construction workers. The unemployment level was said to be high. But now, some families are sitting on millions of dollars.

Someone needs to put Costis Mitsotakis on a suicide watch list, like now.  This has to be the unluckiest guy in the world, right?  Imagine you lived in a small Spanish town stricken with poverty and unemployment.  Your whole life, that’s all you knew.  Then, the day the tickets for the huge annual lottery get sold door-to-door, they miss out on your house.  And then everyone wins.  $950 million.  Your entire village becomes millionaires overnight.  And you’re still living there in your pueblo (I’m assuming), sitting in your old poncho (again, assuming) watching your neighbors drive home in a Bentley while you feed your donkey (terrible assumption).  The amount of joy all around you would be sickening knowing that you are the only person in a 20 mile radius that is poor.  And how does the community take care of him?  They buy a huge portion of his land, confining him to an even smaller place, while he watches with disgust at everyone else’s joy.  That’s the kind of shit that would break any man’s will.  I like to consider myself a strong-willed guy, but you better believe that if I was in Costis Mitsotakis’ position I’d be seeing how much rope I’d need to finish the job.  Someone throw this guy a fucking bone already.