Los Reyes Came Early for one Tenerife Woman

Los Reyes (The Three Kings) don't bring the gifts until Epiphany here - Santa does bring a few on Christmas Eve now - but for one lucky shopper in Santa Cruz, they turned up early this year. Melania Martínez Olivares (29), made one very fortunate 20 euro purchase that turned into 6,000 euros (around £4,000), when she won the traditional Christmas draw, held amongst stores in Tenerife's capital.

The only "problem", was that she had to spend all that money in one ten hour mega shopping expedition, in one day. Just to make it a bit more complicated though, there was a limit of 150 euros that could be spent in any one of the 40 participating shops.

Starting prompt at 10:00 a.m. on December 21st, Ms Martínez, accompanied by two hostesses, enlisted her mother, brother and father to help. Dad got the job of ferrying the morning's parcels home while they took a break for lunch, before continuing into the afternoon's home stretch. The report says that they managed to spend the whole of the 6,000 euros just 15 minutes before the end of the "trial" at 8:00 p.m.

Having completed all of her gift shopping and indulged in her love of shoes, Ms Martínez says even she doesn't remember what she bought, so unwrapping gifts on January 6th will be as much of a surprise for her as it will be for the members of her family. And we all thought that shopping and spending money was easy! :)

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Labels: Christmas