Talk:Sort, Lleida

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Cut from article[edit]

I cut this from article:

Although Sort only has a population of less than 2000, Sort, which means 'Luck' in Catalan, is well known inside and outside of Spain for containing one of the 'winningist' lottery shops. The shop is known as the 'La Bruixa d'Or' which is Catalan for 'The gold Witch'. People are known to queue for its tickets and also to order them from as far away as the Americas.

I'm not completely averse to the possibility of restoring this, but I'd like to see a good citation of them being "one of the 'winningest' lottery shops". http://83.175.206.50/2005-01-04/vivir/vivir11.htm says that 70% of their business is on the Internet, so I'm a little concerned about the possiblity, even without a link to their site, that this is wikispam self-promotion. -- Jmabel | Talk July 4, 2005 17:01 (UTC)

Moved from my talk page:

Hi, the addition I made to the 'Sort' entry about the lotery shop in Catalunya was NOT intended to be any kind of self-promotion but was an example of something culturally interesting about the town (i.e. that the town is called "LUCK" and many believe believe it to be so). I am English, and was fortunate enough to teach English there back in 1995, so I thought I was adding something of interest to the wiki. I apologise if the content was innapropriate, that was my first wiki entry. Please feel free to drop the lottery reference :-D RJ.

Glad to know it wasn't spam. I'll try to come up with a more appropriate way to put the info in there. -- Jmabel | Talk July 5, 2005 15:15 (UTC)

I've now restored related content, but with a less promotional wording. Good citation would still be welcome. -- Jmabel | Talk July 5, 2005 15:41 (UTC)

La Bruixa d'Or has been appearing frequently on Spanish national TV and other media since years ago, especially around this time of the year when the El Gordo lottery draw takes place; as a result, it is one of the most well-known lottery sellers in Spain (along with Doña Manolita on Madrid's Gran Vía). There isn't any shortage of news citations to choose from among major Spanish newspapers (El País, El Mundo, ABC, La Vanguardia, El Periodico de Catalunya, etc.) to support this information; just Google for them and pick your choice among the dozens of references available. Mentioning this info in the article is definitely not wikispam, it is reporting something almost every Spaniard nowadays is well-aware of, because this lottery shop has become something of a media hype and its popularity is continually on the rise, to the point of nearly collapsing their shop with endless queues and thousands of online orders per hour. Currently it is the single biggest lottery seller in the country (with a turnover of over €100 million[1] in Christmas lottery alone last year), a very notable fact on its own, especially considering it is located in a tiny village in the Pyrenees many miles away from any medium or large city (very unlike its biggest rival Doña Manolita located at the very heart of the capital and largest metropolis in the country). With such a huge number of lottery participations sold (€100 million means 5 million Christmas lottery décimos, which is a lot for a single shop, amounting to about 3% of the grand total sold among thousands of lottery shops around the country), it is not surprising that it has often sold some of the numbers that got some big-cashed prizes (e.g., it has sold El Gordo winning numbers thrice, in 2003, 2004 and 2007, the second time selling the entire 195 series of the winning number, whereas most lottery shops would be extremely happy to be able to claim to have sold El Gordo just once). It is also not surprising that its now rich owners have expanded their interests to other businesses (real estate, building, marketing...); recently it was reported that they're planning to run their own airline (to be called Numbair), expected to begin operations around 2010.[2] In fact, given all these facts I think La Bruixa d'Or's notability already qualifies it not only for a prominent mention in this article (since many people in Spain have only heard of Sort in connection with La Bruixa d'Or), but for its very own article. BTW, the notability of this lottery shop is not recent news that weren't yet available in 2005 when the above user accused it of being wikispam; you can easily find news media references from half a decade ago already calling it the biggest and most important lottery seller in the country,[3] even before it sold the El Gordo for two years in a row in 2003 and 2004. Uaxuctum (talk) 15:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]