Spain has held its traditional Christmas lottery — known as “El Gordo,” or “The Fat One” — handing out more than $2.8 billion in total prizes to hundreds of winners across the country.
In keeping with tradition, the lucky numbers were sung by children from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school in a nationally televised drawing Friday from the Teatro Opera House in the capital.
The full price for a ticket is about $212, but tickets are broken up and sold in fractions, known as “decimos,” with the most common ticket costing about $22. The jackpot is purposely designed to allow as many people as possible a small win or to at least break even with a free ticket.
A pair of schoolboys nervously sang out this year’s winning number for the top prize — 88008 — awarding $552,000 for a single ticket. Reuters news service reported it took more than four hours to select the winning number, the latest the winner has been announced in the lottery’s 260-year history.
The total pot for this year’s lottery reached about $2.86 billion — more than last year’s $2.6 billion. Millions participated, eager for a piece of the large prize. Many smaller prizes, as low as $106, were also distributed.
The complex rules of the draw, which allow for many purchases of the same lottery number, make it almost impossible to determine exactly how many people have won. The tickets with the winning number are often sold across several towns and cities.
The lottery dates to 1812 and is a major part of Spain's end-of-year holiday calendar. It is a Spanish tradition for people to come together to listen to the winning numbers being sung.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.