Unfortunately, particularly for anyone living in Cerezales del Condado, Spain, who might have read the story, the only part of it that’s true is that Fernandez died last year. Internet story debunking website, Snopes, lays out the cold, hard truth, as per a recent interview with Lucia Alajos, a spokesman for Fernandez’s non-profit Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia: The incorrect reporting on Fernandez’s will appears to have originated with the Daily Mail, after which it was picked up by a wide variety of outlets (and, full disclosure, very nearly this one). No one knows for sure how the Spanish language reports on Fernandez’s fairly conventional will ended up being misunderstood so severely, but one theory is that reports that emphasized Fernandez’s generosity and philanthropy somehow got twisted into the fictional gesture in question. As for any deathbed billionaires out there who might be looking for a novel way to disperse their life savings after cashing in their chips one last time, this might be a good way to turn some fake news lemons into lemonade.
