MADRID (Portal) – Excited Spaniards sang, cheered and celebrated with sparkling cava across the country on Friday as a Christmas lottery called “El Gordo” (The Fat One) handed out prizes in a centuries-old tradition to kick off the holiday season.
This year's edition, considered the world's largest draw in terms of total prize pot, reached 2.59 billion euros ($2.85 billion), 70 million euros more than last year.
Many Spaniards meet with family, friends or colleagues to buy tickets.
This year, the main prize worth 400,000 euros was distributed among many buyers of the winning number 88008. In this lottery, multiple tickets with the same number can be sold to different groups.
At the Teatro Real in Madrid, young students from the San Ildefonso school chose the numbers from two rotating balls and sang them in front of an audience that sometimes queued for days to watch the draw.
Some wore outlandish costumes, dressed like the Pope or Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or wore hats decorated with lights.
“I come every year with great excitement and joy to spread happiness. I want there to be hope, happiness, excitement, everything,” 79-year-old pensioner Francisco Mur, wearing a suit with a lottery ticket print, told Portal before taking part in the raffle.
The students took turns singing out numbers for over four hours – it never took this long before the main prize was drawn.
In a tradition that began in 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars, people buy Christmas lottery numbers for months. On average, every Spaniard bought tickets worth 70 euros this year, the state lottery said on Friday.
Winning numbers are traced to specific providers, sparking superstitions about where to line up.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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