Officially known as Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad or Loteria de Navidad, Spain’s Christmas Lottery has been held every year since 1812 and continues to be a popular tradition with players all over the country.
The game works differently to most other lotteries and is more like a raffle. You buy either a full ticket, known as a ‘billete’, or a tenth of a ticket called a ‘decimo’, and will be given a five-digit number.
All the 100,000 possible number combinations make up one series, but 170 series are being put up for sale this year. This means that 170 billetes will display the same number, and as tickets showing the same number are usually distributed together to local retailers it is common for whole communities to win if their numbers come up.
When the draw takes place, children from the San Ildefonso School in Madrid pick the winning numbers from one machine (called a bombo) and the associated prize amount from a second machine. They sing the results in a ceremony which lasts for several hours and which is screened on Spanish TV.
The top prize, known as El Gordo, is worth €4 million per billete. Anyone who buys one billete will therefore win the full €4 million, but as each billete costs €200 it is more common for players to buy decimos or join forces in syndicates. Those that purchase one decimo, will win €400,000 if they match the El Gordo number.
Source: GMB / Lotto.net
