Lottery fever gripped Spain on Tuesday as thousands celebrated wins in the El Gordo lottery draw with prizes totaling 2.24 billion euros ($2.45 billion), bringing relief from political woes after an inconclusive election. In 1938, there were actually two Christmas lotteries, one held in Burgos by General Franco’s Nationalist regime, and the other in Republican-ruled Barcelona.
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The winning numbers for a smaller Spanish lottery, called “el Nino”, will be announced January 6. Because the price of a single ticket (€200, or about $219) is so expensive, Spaniards pool their money to buy tickets – and share the wealth, should their number come up.
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We now have big players, but it is hard to compare. “I think he can be a key player as captain of a national team for Belgium”. It’s a few years ago that I was here in a similar situation and I tried to help out when I was asked to do so.
But if you split the cost up with some friends, family or co-workers, who knows?
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Many then stayed glued to TV screens for hours more as schoolchildren plucked lottery balls from a rotating drum, singing out the resulting numbers in a chant that filled offices and homes.
It is the largest prize giveaway in history and an estimated 90 per cent of eligible Spanish people bought a ticket. The town has an unemployment rate of 31 percent – compared to 21 percent for Spain as a whole. One such consolation prize in this year’s El Gordo is worth €400,000 (about $439,000), and 1,600 tickets worth that prize were all sold in one town: Roquetas de March. Queues form outside lottery booths weeks ahead of the draw and on December 22 each year people tune into radio or television to find out if they are among the lucky ones.
People line up to buy lottery tickets in Madrid today.
But Spaniards all over the nation shared in the wealth because their lottery system doles out prizes much more broadly than lotteries with huge jackpots for just a few winners.
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The fatty Christmas lottery in Spain is the most famous in the world and dates back to as long as 1812, and the annual tradition was not even broken during Spain’s civil war. This year, it’s too late for us to all buy tickets but next year?
