FAKE NEWS FROM THE GRAVE: AN UPDATE ON THE SOOTHSAYER’S PREDICTION
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FAKE NEWS FROM THE GRAVE:
AN UPDATE ON THE SOOTHSAYER’S PREDICTION
Just days before the draw of Spain’s Lotería de Navidad, the biggest and most-awaited draw of the year, held on the 22nd of December 2019, Elsa Altagracia, the pythoness of our story from the Dominican Republic but residing in the Galician province of Ourense, predicted that ticket 86098 would bag El Gordo (the Fat one), the First Prize of the grand Christmas lottery. She said voices from the grave gave her the “intuition”. Moreover, the tickets bearing that number would be sold all over Spain but the bulk of it would be in Ourense. In other words, Ourense would have the lion’s share of El Gordo.
An El Gordo lottery ticket
Altagracia isn’t unknown in the Galician province on account of her two decimos’ winning the second prize in the 2017 Lotería de Navidad. (A decimo is one-tenth of a ticket that costs €200.) She won not by chance but for allegedly divining the right number.
The Galician publication La Region ran the story, letting people beyond Galicia know about her self-proclaimed clairvoyance. There was no mad stampede but people around Spain did scramble for the decimos stamped with the magic number before the 2019 Christmas draw called it out.
As it turned out, though, the messages that reached Altagracia from the beyond turned out to be fake!
Reports La Region on the day of the draw: The decimos of ticket 86098 sold like the proverbial hot cakes in Sevilla, Salou. Salamanca, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alcoy, Moraira, Barcelona, Las Torres de Cotillas, Súria, Beniaján and Madrid. But El Gordo turned out differently, ignoring Altagracia’s prediction. Not even a tiny morsel of the succulent First Prize, which went to ticket 26590, found its way to Galicia. (“El premio Gordo ha pasado de largo por Galicia. El 26590, repartido en Sevilla, Salou. Salamanca, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alcoy, Moraira, Barcelona, Las Torres de Cotillas, Súria, Beniaján, Madrid no ha dejado ni un pellizco en la comunidad gallega. El 26590 no ha respondido a las predicciones de la pitonisa de Xinzo Elsa Altagracia que hizo agotar el número 86.098 en los despachos de toda España.”)
You want to do soothsaying? Go look elsewhere for “intuitions” and leave the dead alone!
Moral of the story: Leave the dead in peace. You want to do soothsaying? Go look for other sources of “intuitions”!
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People from all over Spain flock to the legendary Doña Manolita stand in Madrid where ten decimos of the First Prize of this year’s Loteria de Navidad, twenty of the Second Prize, eleven of the Third, etc. were sold.
Lotería de Navidad 2019
Here are the five biggest winners and their prizes, drawn last 22 December 2019.
1st prize (El Gordo) winning number: 26590. Prize €4 million.
2nd prize, winning number: 10989. Prize €1.25 million.
3rd prize, number 00750. Prize €500,000.
4th prize, winning numbers 41710 & 49797. Two prizes, €200,000 each
5th prize, winning numbers 75206, 06293, 23059, 66212, 74770, 54527, 69823 & 81610 (eight prizes). Prize €60,000 each
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Images
Featured image/Mike Maguire, CC BY2.0
El Gordo ticket/Alvaro Ibañez, CC BY2.0, Flickr
Ghosts/Pat David, CC BY-SA2.0
Doña Manolita/Barcex, CC BY-SA3.0
