Anica Bordei serves a drink to a customer at the village cafe she manages, in Sodeto, Spain.

JUST a few weeks ago, the 70 households in the tiny isolated farming village of Sodeto were struggling under the double whammy of Spain's economic downturn and the ravages of a severe drought.
Some were even thinking of passing up Spain's huge Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo - the fat one. But they bought tickets out of loyalty to the local homemakers' association, which makes a small percentage on the sales.
And then, their number came in and all but one household in Sodeto held at least a piece of a winning ticket in the lottery's huge first prize, $US950 million ($A894 million), the biggest ever.
Some of Sodeto's residents, mostly farmers and unemployed construction workers, won millions. The least fortunate came away with a minimum of $US130,000.
It is a rare piece of happy news in the relentlessly gloomy European economic crisis, in which Spain has been one of the hardest of the hard-luck cases. But it is not without cost: the village, until now a dot on the map three hours north-west of Barcelona, has been inundated with salesmen and fortune seekers - bankers offering high interest rates, car salesman talking up BMWs and furniture dealers going door to door.
Like many other local farmers, Jose Manuel Penella Cambra, who had recently invested in more efficient irrigation, worried about how he would meet his payments. But his wife bought two tickets, worth $US260,000, and his son found two more she had bought earlier and had forgotten, bringing the total to $US520,000. ''This money means that now we can breathe. And the best part is that it isn't just me. Everybody won,'' he said.
The Christmas lottery, first established in 1812, is a huge event in Spain. Many people take the morning off to watch the televised coverage of the numbers being drawn.
The Sodeto homemakers' association sells the tickets and usually nets about $US1300, which it uses to pay for food and decorations at local festivals. This year the tickets brought in more than $US150 million. So far, though, no one has splurged on anything much.
Some hope the money will help keep the next generation in the village. In the 1960s, Sodeto had 400 residents, but nowadays only 250 people live there.
The only resident who did not win was Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker, who moved to the village for love of a woman. It did not work out. But he still lives here in a barn he is restoring outside the village. Somehow, the ticket sellers overlooked him as they made the rounds.
Mr Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbour called to say he would buy it. The next day another neighbour called. But Mr Mitsotakis refused to get into a bidding war. ''This is a small village,'' he said. ''You don't want bad feelings.''