Who are you callin' El Gordo? Expat blogger Sal de Traglia tries his luck

They hold your destiny: Two children sing out winning numbers of El Gordo

Spain's annual Christmas Lottery might be the biggest event of Spain's holiday season. Make no mistake—this is no normal lottery.

It is, in fact, one of the world's biggest gambling competitions; and the sums involved are enormous.

In 2002 (sorry, but I’m too lazy to update my
research), the Christmas Lottery paid out EUR 1.6 billion in prize money.

Little wonder, then, that up to seventy-five percent of the Spanish population plays it.

But the Christmas Lottery process can be as confusing as a Buñuel movie, so let me provide a quick primer. 

At least, to the extent that I understand it after seven years of living here for seven years.

Lottery tickets come in two varieties: decimos and participaciones.

Decimos are a full ticket, and cost
EUR 20 each. Participaciones are fractions of a decimo, and can be bought for as little as EUR 1.

Of course, a winning decimo’s pay-out is similarly discounted.

With tickets in hand, all of Spain waits for the ceremony to take place on 22 December.

The ceremony is a rather formal affair that is broadcast on TV and radio.

On stage are two giant, spinning, gold cages.

Each cage is filled with numbered balls. The cage on the left determines the
winning ticket numbers; the cage on the right determines the amount of prize money.

A pair of children from Madrid’s San Ildefonso Orphanage bound onto the stage.

The cages are spun under the watchful eye of an auditor, and balls drop
out of each. The child tending the cage to the left grabs his balls (heh heh…sorry ‘bout that) and chants
the winning five-digit number (“Treinta y dos -ochenta y uno - cinco”).

The child at the cage on the
right then chants the amount of prize money payable to that winning number (“Un mil E-uuuuur-oooooos”).

These chants, I should mention, will continue echoing through your head for days after the Lottery has
ended.

If you thought that ABBA songs were sticky on the brain, then you’ll probably find the after-effects
of Spain’s Christmas Lottery downright torturous.

Anyway…the scenario described above repeats itself hundreds of times during the next three hours of the ceremony.

As such, there is not a single winning
number as in “normal” lotteries, but rather hundreds of winning numbers.

Most of the winning tickets pay
out small to moderate sums. But not all!

First prize—the BIG prize—in this competition is known as El Gordo (“The Fat One”).

This is the reason that so many people play the Christmas Lottery.

El Gordo can pop up at any time during the ceremony—it all depends on when that naughty cage on the right decides
to cough-up the magic ball.

In 2002, there were 180 people whose tickets matched the El Gordo number—and
each of these tickets paid-out nearly 2 million euros.
Not bad for a EUR 20 investment, eh?

When the El Gordo number is announced, TV crews rush to the place (usually a bar or Lotto shop) where the stack of winning tickets were sold--by which time, the winning ticket holders have already broken out bottles of cava and are well on their way to getting drunk
before millions of envious eyes.

Check out Sal's weekly essay on the "Expatica Spain" news service website  http://www.expatica.com/   Then, step into his "Virtual Tapas Bar" at http://saldetraglia.blogspot.com/

[Copyright Expatica]

[December 2006]

Subject: Spain; Expat blog, El Gordo