According to practically every single news bulletin throughout the world, The Republic of Greece, AKA, The Hellenic Republic the “cradle of western civilisation,” currently has a bit of a cash flow crisis, is little short of the readies and is struggling to pay its debts! Aren’t we all?

However, being Greek didn’t bring any financial solace either to film maker Costis Mitsotakis, who is the only Greek inhabitant of the Spanish village of Sodeto. This is the tiny village tucked away in the municipality of Alberuela de Tubo, Huesca, Spain where the entire population of 70 households, decided to pool their resources in order to buy tickets for Spain’s biggest lottery – El Gordo and then won first prize – a staggering NINE HUNDRED and TWENTY-THREE MILLION dollars – yes you did read that right $923,000,000 which meant that the minimum every household walked away with was $132,000 apiece!

All except one that is, no prizes for guessing the missed household – right first time – Costis Mitsotakis! Sadly it appears that when his neighbours were going around every house in the village persuading people to buy El Gordo lottery tickets, Mitsotakis, who lives in a barn half a mile outside Sodeto, mistakenly got overlooked.

Fortunately not all is doom and gloom for Mitsotakis, as he had been trying to sell some land without much success, It now appears that after learning of their lottery win, a neighbour called to say he would buy it and now more neighbours have put in offers on the land; however Mitsotakis doesn’t want any bad feelings in such a small village and has refused to get into a bidding war! He sounds like a very nice guy indeed!

Spain is of course noted, amongst other things, for its addiction to big money lotteries and raffles and with just over 1 day to go before the next Spanish Special Millionaire Raffle is due to be drawn, then this weekend is no exception. Up for grabs is a very tasty ONE HUNDRED and TEN MILLION dollars, which should help a little until your next payday! To be in with a chance of winning, you need a ticket and the place to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s Special Millionaire Raffle is right here at WinTrillions!

As the old saying goes, “it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings” and for the tiny town of Granen in the north eastern Spanish region of Huesca, the “fat lady” has been belting out her song loudly and clearly. Spain’s El Gordo de la Primitiva lottery aka “The Fat One” – the world’s richest lottery – this year worth a mind-blowing $3,567,000,000, was finally drawn at a three hour televised ceremony from Madrid yesterday.

For the lucky 2,000 cash strapped inhabitants of Granen it seems that all their Christmases have been rolled into one – Lady Luck has arrived – Santa is finally “in the building!” The top prize was shared between the holders of ticket number 58268 which appeared on 1,800 winning tickets, all of which were sold in Granen. The good news is; each winner will pocket around four hundred thousand greenbacks – well I expect they’ve had worse days!

The El Gordo draw dates back to 1812 and marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Spain has seen lottery fever reach epidemic proportions since tickets first went on sale about 8 weeks ago with long, long queues forming at lottery outlets throughout the country. Indeed thieves have even been caught on security cameras attempting to rob lottery outlets in Madrid.

Rather than a single jackpot lottery the main aim of the El Gordo draw is a “fair shares for all” raffle which encourages whole bunches of people to pool their money in order to buy shares of several or many tickets and means that it’s not uncommon for multiple prizes to go to the same town.

Now just in case you missed out on El Gordo you might like to know that Spain is running another big lottery on January 6 to mark the Feast of the Epiphany, this one is called El Nino and is the second most important draw in the Spanish Lottery draw calendar and just in case you’re wondering whether to bother; let me tell you that the top prize is $1,097,900,070 – that’s one thousand and ninety seven million, nine hundred thousand and seventy bucks – or £1.097 BILLION – if that floats your boat!

As always you can buy lottery tickets for El Nino, as well as many other of the world’s biggest and richest lotteries from right here at WinTrillions.

Image via Wikipedia

How true that is – the forthcoming midweek lottery jackpots are climbing ever higher after nobody matched the winning numbers in this weekend’s American lotteries, including Powerball, Mega Millions, Florida Lotto, Indiana Hoosier Lotto.

In Europe neither Euro Millions or Italy’s Super Enalotto produced winning matches, which means just one thing big-buck roll-overs everywhere!

As the old saying goes “you can tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys” and you can get yourself some pretty good toys with this week’s forthcoming jackpots. Powerball $245 million, Mega Millions $78 million, Florida Lotto, $23 million, Indiana Hoosier $17 million, Euro Millions $46 million, Super Enalotto $41 million.

That’s $450 million from just 6 of the lotteries you can play right here at WinTrillions and that’s just between now and Wednesday – of course there’s many, many more.

Right now is also the time to buy tickets for the biggest draw of the lot Spain’s El Gordo de La Primitiva – the “Fat One” due to be drawn on 22nd December, the prize pot stands at a staggering $3,567,311,854 ($3.5 billion or $3,567 million if you prefer to talk millions instead of billions). Santa’s grotto might never look the same again!

Remember you can play all of these lotteries, as well as lotteries from all around the world here at WinTrillions, without even having to leave your house, just click the links and you might just be first in the toy shop queue next Wednesday morning.

With only 8 weeks to go until 22 December, the countdown’s officially started to the world’s oldest, the world’s biggest, the world’s most exciting lottery raffle of the year. It’s the draw lottery fans everywhere call the “Fat One” aka Spain’s El Gordo de La Primitiva lottery – the world’s greatest lottery game! The doors are now open for business and tickets are on sale.

It’s not called the “Fat One” for nothing as this year’s prize fund is expected to top €2.5 billion – no it’s not a typo and your eyes haven’t deceived you it is very definitely a big, fat, juicy €2.5 BILLION! WOW – that might even be enough to pay off your credt card!

The draw is televised and regularly attracts TV audiences in excess of 20 million for the three hour programme and with a 1 in 3 chance of winning a prize it won’t come as any great shock to learn that Spanish residents are passionate about the “Fat One” and might help explain why 98% of their adult population buy a ticket. Not surprising then, that people queue for hours and hours to get their tickets – the good news is you too can muscle in on the El Gordo action even if you don’t live in Spain without once havng to stand in line.

As soon as we receive your El Gordo entry we’ll send a WinTrilions agent to buy your tickets on your behalf over the counter from a local store in Spain, print your name across every ticket, send you a scanned copy and e-mail you the results.

Just one note of caution – the “Fat One” is also the focus of attention by many scammers, rip-off merchants, tricksters and con-artists only too ready, willing and eager to take advantage of El Gordo’s big, fat, juicy €2.5 billion opportunity. Of course, the best risk free option of all, is to buy your lottery tickets right here at WinTrillions - the world’s largest online lottery website, with more lotto games, more rollovers and bigger jackpot prizes on offer than anywhere else. WinTrillions provides lottery fans with a safe, secure and trusted gateway to play the richest and most exciting government-licensed lotteries in the world.