How to get involved in one of Spain’s Christmas traditions, El Gordo de Navidad lottery.
Credit: elgordo.com
If you’ve spent time in Spain during winter, you’ll have heard of El Gordo de Navidad, the famous Spanish Christmas lottery. This guide explains what all the excitement is about, and how you can join in the fun!
How El Gordo de Navidad Works
Also known as El Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad this lottery is extraordinary because it takes place only once a year on December 22. It differs to lotteries like the National Lottery in the UK because, with El Gordo, you don’t pick numbers. Instead, it works like a raffle.
Tickets are ready printed, meaning you purchase them with numbers you didn’t personally choose.
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What makes the lottery special is the series number. Hundreds of people can have the same series number and the amount changes each year. For example, this year the number of series per number has increased from 185 to 193.
Why El Gordo de Navidad is known as the world’s biggest lottery
If a particular number is drawn out during the El Gordo de Navidad results, all the tickets from all the series with that number automatically win the corresponding prize. The cash prize allotted for that number goes to each person with that number; the prize is not shared out between them.
Rather than being the size of the jackpot prize, (usually about 4 million euros) it is these huge payouts, affecting hundreds of people with the same number is that has earned El Gordo de Navidad the reputation for being the biggest lottery in the world!
How to Play
An unusual aspect of El Gordo de Navidad is that, thanks to Spanish Gaming Authority rules, players do not have to be a resident of Spain to play the lottery and win a prize.
Before you rush out to buy a ticket, here are all your options explained.
If you ask for a billete (ticket) it will set you back 200 euros. Which might seem a bit excessive for a little Christmas flutter.
Instead, you can purchase un decimo (tenth) for 20 euros. Bilettes are all divided into 10 decimos which all have the same serie number.
Most people buy a decimo. However, some people or businesses buy a decimo, split it into parts and sell these parts, which are called a participacion. Really, this splitting is the equivalent of people clubbing together to buy a lottery ticket and sharing the prize if it wins.
‘The Greatest Prize is Sharing’
Because of this splitting up of tickets, El Gordo de Navidad is often played by large groups of people.
On December 22, 2012, 80 families in the small farming village of Sodeto in northern Spain won and shared the El Gordo Christmas jackpot.
At this time, the country’s economic crisis was hitting the local farming communities hard. Picking the lucky number for El Gordo and sharing the top prize between them made a huge difference to the whole village.
One example is that of 33 year old José Manuel, who had thought it impossible for him to stay in Sodeto. Because of the lottery win, he was able not only to buy a house in the village but also to expand the family business, hire workers and purchase new tools for the farm.
Get Involved in El Gordo
You can purchase tickets online or at local outlets called Loterias. At this time of year you’ll be able to spot these by the amount of people queueing to buy tickets, especially in the cities.
Tickets sales end the day before the draw on December 21.
Now that you understand the El Gordo de Navidad spirit, why not get a group of friends, neighbours or colleagues together and get involved?