He always told the same story: a woman had read his palm and predicted that he would die a millionaire. But when his heart forced him to get a pacemaker last November, at age 87, he believed he wouldn’t make it. A month later, on December 22, Jesús Martínez, Chuso, verified how the three tenths of the 5,490 that he kept in the pocket of his blue jacket were graced with the Christmas Fat. They had touched him 1.2 million euros. He little time he was able to enjoy them. He died four months later.
The fourth month, before he died, at the age of 88, he spent in the hospital. Today his friends believe that he left happy, because his dream had come true. Although, unfortunately, everything happened a little late. And not because he hadn’t tried. In the social center of Moreda, in Asturias, where Chuso went every day to eat, they say that he was a fan of the Lottery. It was not about winning, but about maintaining the illusion. When, years ago, raffles were held in Oviedo, he would go to the capital to see them.
“He played everything: Primitiva, Lottery…”, recalls his friend Jorge Baizán, to whom Chuso stopped speaking for 15 days, upset because one year his partner, and not him, had a small pinch in the Primitiva . «All day he told me: ‘But why did he touch you? If I play a lot more…’».
A sample of Chuso’s tenacity is that in the Collainos administration, located a few meters from the social center and where El Gordo had bought, they saw him again a few days after the winning tickets were entered into the bank. He wanted to play more, the Children’s Lottery. And the people said to him: “But Chuso, don’t you have enough with what he gave you?” To which he replied: “Ye for maintaining the illusion.”
And his illusion was also to tell it. That she had touched him, at last. For this reason, on December 22, when television and newspapers appeared in his town, he did not hesitate to let himself be photographed and tell the four winds what a millionaire he was. That is now remembered by Charo Álvarez, from the confectionery where Chuso went every day to have coffee. «I warned him. I told him: ‘Chuso, don’t say it out there, that you live alone, you’re older and there are very bad people.’ But he didn’t care. He was happy”.
And it is that, for a long time, few things excited Chuso. He had no children and his wife, Maruja, passed away more than 20 years ago. Even so, he had enjoyed fairly good health and “he managed very well on his own,” recalls Noelia Baizán, a neighbor who attended him daily, in the bar of the social center. «Don’t see how clean and organized the house is. And, for Christmas, there is no house with so many lights and Christmas decorations. He loved the spirit of those dates ». Chuso’s cousin, to whom he was very close, also passed away a long time ago and now it will be his three nephews, who live far away, who will inherit.
And there is much talk about it these days in Moreda. Of how little this man of his fortune could enjoy. That Chuso worked first carrying packages at the railway station and then he was in the mine. That he took care of his wife when she was sick until she died and that she never had a bad word with anyone. About how late his luck came and how little that money had changed his life. Because, since he deposited the tickets in the bank, he “kept doing exactly the same thing.”
That same number, 5,490, has continued to bring misfortune. The Mieres athletics club distributed 137 million euros in shares of five euros each. Now they are turning the page and enjoying the award, but its directors, Chus Hevia and Javi García, remember that, after the first day of celebrations, after the interviews in the media and after the first moments of joy, disappointments arrived.
They have been offering club shares at Christmas at their jobs, to neighbors, to everyone for years… «Sometimes you were angry until you offered it, because they didn’t buy you. But this year, you don’t know how many blamed us for it”, recalls Jesús. “They even called me a ‘scoundrel’ for not selling in the neighborhood,” he says. But it wasn’t just them. “There are people from the club who at work stopped talking to them and accused them of not selling them the tickets on purpose, as if we knew what was going to happen to us!”
They remember the case of a nurse who did not go to a dinner with friends in which one offered ballots. They didn’t remember to give them to her another day-“They are things you don’t think about”-and she got angry.
It was not the only thing. They still remember when the Civil Guard called them to tell them that there were several complaints in the neighborhood command that claimed that they paid for the ballots and that they did not deliver them. “Even one denounced because he said that he had lost it. People are very hard-faced and believe that they can take advantage of this situation. When the count was made, it turned out that they had all been charged, so neither lost, nor stolen, nor in the washing machine.
Now, as the months go by, they are beginning to enjoy the Lottery at the club, but they admit that the first days were hard. “Now we see colleagues arrive with a new car, some have bought a flat.” Even the club is doing better because, although there were no shares left, when the money entered, they took out some interest.
Laura and Irene García, the sisters who run the administration that El Gordo sold in Moreda, did not get a single euro. But that day, December 22, they were euphoric. They had brought luck to hundreds of homes. It was a good way to end a year that was being very bad. Since the death of their father, they had taken over the Collainos administration, they had not distributed a large prize. But the joy did not last long. Two days later, in the middle of Christmas Eve, her mother, who had been ill for a long time, died. That same week, Laura had her car scratched and her hood smashed.
They reported it to the Civil Guard. “We never knew if he went by chance, due to vandalism or it was someone angry because he did not take any prize,” they recall. After the Christmas raffle, they say that sales went up, but with the passage of time the business is back to what it was before. And the luck happened to be only of a few.
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