A well-dressed gentleman strolls through the waiting room at Madrid’s Chamartín train station. “The twenty-two,” he calls out, “does anyone need the twenty-two?” These are the final digits of a ticket he is offering: a ticket from the Spanish Christmas lottery. It is quite possible that he will find buyers who are still urgently looking for the twenty-two, perhaps because of a birthday or simply because the winning numbers will be drawn on December 22nd this year.
However, it is safer to get a ticket for the Lotería Nacional de Navidad, probably the world’s most famous lottery draw, from one of the more than 10,000 state sales outlets. The winnings paid out to various lottery numbers this year amount to almost 2.6 billion euros.
The main prize, El Gordo, “the fat one”, is worth the almost unimaginable sum of 740 million euros. But unlike the relevant jackpot lotteries, the Christmas draw hardly produces multimillionaires, but rather many winners. This is because 1,850 shares of each of the five-digit lot numbers are put into trading, so-called decimos, “tenths of tickets” at 20 euros each. To everyone victorious decimo 400,000 euros are lost. If you want to become a millionaire, you have to have several decimos or buy a whole series.
The probability of winning the main prize is therefore higher than with the 6 out of 49 variant that is common in Germany – namely one in a hundred thousand. And while the finance ministers of the federal states keep around half of the stake, in Spain 70 percent of the turnover goes to the winners. However, unlike in Germany, from 40,000 euros a fifth of the profit is withheld as tax.
The fact that hundreds of winners can celebrate together sometimes leads to bizarre events. Sometimes company employees or entire villages buy decimos the same series. In 2017, residents of the Galician town of Vilalba collectively won more than 540 million euros. The local school staff alone held more than a hundred winning tickets.
Supposedly lucky numbers sell out quickly
So what will the lucky number be this year? Spaniards have been speculating about this for weeks. And this time it’s not just Tiktokers and Instagrammers who are trying to be prophets. Chat-GPT, you guessed it, was also surveyed and, after analyzing the more than 210-year history of Christmas draws, allegedly came to the conclusion: 03695 was the most likely winning ticket. Of course everyone was decimos This number sold out in a very short time.
End digits with common lucky numbers such as 13 and 25 are also no longer available throughout the country. Georgina Rodríguez, a well-known influencer and the partner of the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, triggered a run on the 11448 after she met her on vacation decimo had photographed.
Decide about El Gordo will, shortly before El Niño, the Christ Child, is celebrated, a small wooden ball. It is drawn during an hour-long, televised ceremony on the stage of the Madrid Opera House. In keeping with tradition, boys from Madrid’s San Ildefonso School sing out the winning numbers and prizes.