Twelfth night

During the month of December, if you shopped in Guardamar you were given raffle tickets, for a draw to take place tonight in the town hall square.  The proceedings started at 5pm, but true to Spanish tradition they started late.

On a stage were the local dignitaries plus the Guardamar Fiesta Queen and her helpers.  There were 5 bowls with numbered balls in them 0 - 9, from each bowl was drawn a number and if the 5 numbers corresponded to the numbers on your ticket you won of  the three prizes, 2 x 500 euros and 1 x 1000 euros.  It took nearly 20 minutes for the first winning combination of numbers to emerge, another 15 minutes or so for the second, and the winning ticket was won at 5.55pm. The lucky lady winning a 1000 euros.

At that point every one in the square threw their tickets up in the air and walked away, no one batted an eyelid at the thousands of tickets lying on the floor.  By tomorrow morning they will have all been swept up by the local street cleaners, the tree will have been taken down, and things will be back to normal.

I made the comment to Roy that if this had happened in the UK every one would have incurred a hefty fine for litter dropping

At first the time span in between the sets of numbers being called was about 2 minutes, then it went down to a minute, after about half an hour if you were lucky enough to have the correct combination you had to be pretty quick to make yourself known to the announcer

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