The 15 young people who are part of the Villamanín Festival Commission are sad that their town is dying. For this reason, they voluntarily dedicate part of their time to organizing activities that attract people to this Leonese town. In the summer of 2025, like every year for seven years, they bought the Christmas Lottery for the inhabitants of the town, the surrounding area and travelers passing through. They sold 90 tenths in shares of five euros, four of them played the lottery and the fifth euro was kept by the Commission to finance the festivities. In total, 450 shares were distributed. The day before the drawing, these guys made a very serious mistake: they did not register all the shares sold in the administration, as they should do to be entitled to the prize. 50 stayed at the house of one of them, so they were not validated for their corresponding tenths. In addition to the mistake, they had bad luck: . And four million in prizes were left up in the air.
This Friday was the worst day in the history of the Commission. The young people, who are between 18 and 25 years old, went to the Pensioner’s Home to explain first-hand what had happened. During the almost four hours that the meeting lasted, tension increased. Some winners, not all, accused them of being scammers, the group claims. They reproached them that the carelessness had not been such, but rather a deliberate act to keep the 250 euros that the lottery players had paid for those shares.
In that same space, when the worst of the night has passed and the waters seem to calm down, the boys, despite everything, remain united. Embracing each other, the first thing that comes out of them is to deny any type of premeditation in their actions: “We have not stolen anything and there has never been any type of trap.” With tears in his eyes, the youngest of them puts words to the worst of everything: “tonight we lost friends.” It has been a day of many emotions: anxiety, sadness, anger, despair. These boys and girls prefer not to give their names: they fear that the situation will affect their professional careers in the future.
At the end of the meeting, at 10 p.m., most of the attendees went home in silence and even covering their faces. Only a few announced to the media an agreement between the winners and the Commission. According to the agreement reached, the group renounces the prize of its ballots “in order to ensure that what began with joy for all the people continues to be so until the end, even if we are left with nothing,” states the statement issued by the Commission late at night. Their share is not enough to cover the four million euros with which the participations that were never recorded have been awarded. Until that figure is reached, a small percentage will be deducted from the rest of the winning tickets.
However, the agreement is, even for the most optimistic of the people, fragile. It was reached with a show of hands, without a census, with strong disagreements and nothing was written down. Furthermore, the numbers dance. Some neighbors consulted say that the percentage to be subtracted from the winning tickets will amount to 10%. The Commission aimed for less than 5%. The amount that young people give up is also not clear. The figure moves, depending on who is asked, from two million to 1.2. The statement does not provide any type of information about the agreement.
Below the room where the heated debate has just ended, is the last bar in this town where in winter there are barely 100 inhabitants. In one of the last groups of the night, close to the bar, several neighbors settle the big question floating in the air: was it really a mistake? They cannot confirm it, because they accept the possibility of human error. However, the shadow of suspicion does not dissipate. “You never think you’re going to hit the jackpot,” says a man who spent the afternoon at the meeting. And for this reason, he speculates, they could dare to keep the money.
This man, who prefers not to give his name given that everyone in the town knows each other and things are heated, adds another layer of doubt about the Commission. He assures that the young people appeared on television the day they won the lottery announcing more shares and tenths than those they now claim to have. It also attests to the bad time that these boys have had trying to defend themselves: “They have even offered to show their bank accounts to show that they are not hiding the collection of any prize.”
The guys from the Commission say they feel supported by the majority of the people and that those who are suspicious are the least. “We want Villamanín to be remembered by the town that fell to El Gordo, not by the town that was divided because it fell to El Gordo,” they say. This idea that the town could be divided in half worries many of the groups that little by little are dissolving in their snowy streets.
In one of them, Julia González, a 14-year-old girl, talks to her friends about what has happened. “What difference does it make to have more or have less if in the end we are all going to have it?” he ponders. He does not hesitate to praise the work that the Commission does. If it weren’t for them, he believes there would be many fewer people in the town.
“What a day,” comments one of the bar’s last customers. Angela, the 25-year-old owner, collects the bottles and leftover food from those who have spent the afternoon and part of the night in the establishment. “And what we have left,” he replies. He says this because the battle that is being fought in this town to recover four million euros together has not come to an end.
