MADRID (AP) – For weeks, the Spanish had been expecting the arrival of “El Gordo” or “The Fat One”.
But unlike Santa Claus, El Gordo arrived three days before Christmas, before noon on Sunday.
El Gordo is the first prize of Spain's popular national Christmas lottery, which is said to be the biggest in the world based on the total prize money involved, even though single prizes more at other lotteries. This year's draw will release a fortune of 2.7 billion euros (about $2.8 billion), much of it in small wins.
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Several ticket holders with the number 72480 won the top prize, worth 400,000 euros (about $417,000) before taxes. The winning tickets were sold in Logroño, a city in the La Rioja region of northern Spain known for its wine.
Multiple tickets with the same number can be sold to different groups and full tickets are divided into 10 parts. Buying and sharing these fractions, called “décimos” or tenths in Spanish, is a popular tradition before Christmas. Families, friends, and colleagues often participate, usually paying 20 euros (about $21) each.
On Sunday, young students from the San Ildefonso school in Madrid selected the numbers from two revolving orbs in the capital's Teatro Real opera house and sang them out in turn for almost five hours in the end who knew the Spanish. After announcing “El Gordo”, audience – some dressed as Don Quijote, Christmas elves, wise men of the Bible and their own lot – began to flow out of the place, from where the event took place broadcast nationally.
María Ángeles, a teacher from the southwestern region of Badajoz, said she waited for hours to get a seat inside the opera house to watch the event with a group of 14 friends and family members with whom she traveled to Madrid. .
“The hope is to come and see the lot,” said Ángeles.
The lottery works on the basis of distributing the most winning numbers to the largest number of people possible. There are hundreds of small prizes and 13 major ones, including the “El Gordo” winner.
In the weeks leading up to the draw, lines form outside lottery offices, especially those that have a history of selling winning tickets in previous years.
Spain's Christmas lottery began on December 22 during the Napoleonic wars in 1812 and has continued largely uninterrupted since then, even during the Spanish Civil War. Students from San Ildefonso school have been singing the awards since the beginning.
Spain's national lottery was first established as a charity in 1763 by the Bourbon monarch, King Carlos III. It was later used to dig up state coffins. Today, he supports a number of charities.
