ONCE...

if the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore next to the hotel macarena had made it just a few more hours, they might have had the luck to avoid the fire or whatever it was that brought all of those patrol cars and fire engines (and the one news van) out last night to block the traffic running west toward the andalucian parliament building just down the street, in the anterior gardens of which, just like on every other weekday evening, the marching band of the hermandad of the basilica of the macarena was practicing for the next time it would accompany the city’s favorite virgin into the streets for the night. and the band made itself heard, just like on every other weekday, even above the noise of the sirens, which might not have had to announce the hurry of so many emergency response vehicles to the discount furniture superstore had whatever it was befell the proprietors not befallen them until this next, more auspicious day: today, the much anticipated eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2011.

i suppose, at least, that this day has some significance elsewhere, because when i went searching last night (just before passing the fracas next door to the hotel macarena) for the time of the special lottery drawing to find out if i still had time to buy a ticket this morning, the “news” articles to which i was directed were generally bent toward the same vague dime store numerology that insisted on the universal luckiness of the numbers one and eleven. but, cosmic or esoteric significance aside, el once del once del once will certainly be a lucky day for a lucky twelve people here in spain, because those twelve were lucky (or just foresighted) enough to have bought tickets for the special ONCE lottery, which will award eleven million euros to one lucky contestant and one million euros to each of eleven others. and, apparently, as of yesterday morning, tickets were all but impossible to find, sold out from nearly every ONCE lottery outlet in the country.

which, i suppose, should be seen as auspicious for the issuing organization itself, as we can expect that ONCE (organización nacional de ciegos españoles, the national organization of spanish blind people) will have made more than enough from ticket sales for this special drawing (it runs other -- some of them daily – lotteries, all of which offer tax exempt prizes to winners, throughout the year) to cover paying the lucky winners and then to devote a sizeable amount to its social and cultural projects. and who could begrudge them the opportunity to capitalize, since, as the news has pointed out, they won’t have another opportunity for benefiting from the synonymity of a date for another thousand years.

the essential thing is, however, that i don’t think anyone here would think to begrudge them. like any charity, ONCE, founded in 1938, has surely had its share of intrigues, ethical inquiries and administrative snafus. or not. the most i know of the organization is from the commercials for the special drawing -- and as a result of those, which include spanish subtitles to accompany the voice describing the collective celebration that is to be 11/11/11, i can only say that the organization has been nothing but helpful in my personal experience. and from what i can tell from the action in the streets, many of those who participate in the daily drawings do so because they want to support the ONCE staff that sell them their cupóns, many of whom are visually impaired or otherwise disabled.

the secret of spain’s dual economy -- the one legitimate and the other, no less pervasive and functional, but illegitimated by the legitimacy of the first -- is pathetically poorly kept; and if international monetary policy is the means by which the two could be rationalized and everyone brought into the fold, then perhaps spain should be left to its own devices. here, the other half may not live at the top of the world economy, but it does, if simply, live well. of course (of course), there are still the homeless and the extremely impoverished (although international monetary policy would have little to offer those people in any consideration), but that essential thing is that those lucky twelve ticket holders probably did want to help (regardless of how they might end up spending their winnings once they find themselves legitimated). nowhere else have i seen such genuine respect for and desire to assist -- publicly, in all senses -- the disabled, the elderly, the infirm and those friends in need, or such clear absence of guilt or vanity in the provision of that help, especially for its regular public display. (and the spanish call themselves catholics!) on average, it may never get that second flat screen television -- or the first, but it would seem that most of spain can expect to be fed -- or at least given a drink so as to share in the spirit of the rest of the people in the plaza.

so, as luck would have it, maybe the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore didn’t need to be thinking about luck after all. it’s likely that someone would have been there after the fact to help, in some simple but significant way, even if the emergency response could do nothing to prevent the fire or whatever from spreading to the hotel and razing the whole block as the band played. that’s what i’ve been thinking, anyway, this morning of el once del once del once, which, for me, will soon turn into the afternoon of the season’s first christmas party. and maybe it’s just the spirit of the impending season that’s clouding a feeling that would otherwise be something, if not guiltier, then certainly much vainer; but it’s also for wondering as much that i wonder if i haven’t already shared in the celebration of the day for thinking that, yeah, we should all be so lucky.