MADRID (AP) — For weeks, Spaniards had expected the arrival of “El Gordo” or “The Fat One.”
But unlike Sinterklaas, El Gordo arrived three days before Christmas, before Sunday afternoon.
El Gordo is the first prize in Spain’s hugely popular national Christmas lottery, which is said to be the largest in the world based on total prize money, even though other lotteries have larger individual prizes. This year’s draw will spread wealth totaling 2.7 billion euros (about $2.8 billion), much of it in small wins.
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Several cardholders with the number 72480 won the grand prize, worth 400,000 euros (approximately $417,000) before taxes. The winning tickets were sold in Logroño, a city in the northern Spanish region of La Rioja known for its wines.
Multiple tickets with the same number can be sold to different groups and full tickets are divisible into 10 parts. Buying and sharing these fractions, known in Spanish as ‘décimos’ or tithes, is a popular tradition in the run-up to Christmas. Families, friends and colleagues often join in, usually spending 20 euros (about $21) each.
On Sunday, young students from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school selected the songs from two rotating spheres in the capital’s Teatro Real opera house and took turns singing them out for almost five hours in a cadence familiar to Spaniards. After “El Gordo” was announced, spectators – some dressed in costumes such as Don Quixote, Christmas elves, Biblical wise men and the lottery itself – began pouring out of the venue, from where the event was nationally televised.
María Ángeles, a teacher from the southwestern province of Badajoz, said she waited in line for hours to get a seat at the opera house to watch the event with a group of fourteen friends and relatives she was traveling to Madrid with.
“The purpose of going to the lottery is the hope,” Ángeles said. She estimated that no one in her group had won more than 140 euros ($146).
The lottery works on the premise that the most winning numbers are distributed among the largest possible number of people. There are hundreds of small prizes and 13 major prizes, including the winner of “El Gordo”.
In the weeks leading up to the drawing, lines form outside lottery offices, especially those with a history of selling prize-winning tickets in previous years.
The Spanish December 22 Christmas lottery began during the Napoleonic Wars in 1812 and has continued largely without interruption since, even during the Spanish Civil War. From the beginning, students from the San Ildefonso school sing the praises.
The Spanish National Lottery was first established as a charity in 1763 by the Bourbon monarch, King Carlos III. Later it was used to strengthen the state treasury. Today it supports various charities.
