For more than 200 years, millions of Spaniards have joined with friends and family members to buy fractions of the same ticket, known as “decimos” (tenths), which can pay out up to 400,000 euros for every 20 euros wagered.
The jackpot will hand out a total of 660 million euros to the owners of the winning “decimos”, with 10 tickets in every series of the same number.
This year’s magic number was 66513 and the tickets were all sold from one lottery shop in the poor Acacias neighbourhood of Madrid.
The 2016 Christmas lottery will distribute more 2.31 billion euros in prizes, 70 million euros more than last year.
Some people say the past two years of increased ticket sales is a sign Spain’s economy may be recovering, with people willing to spend more.
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One of the winners, Javier, who owns a bar in the working class neighbourhood of Acacias where the lucky ticket was sold, says he’s going to do “good things” with his windfall.
“Help my wife and her family in Ecuador, help my brother, my mother, my sister and myself,” he said.
Also celebrating her luck was Juani.
“My husband played the lottery a lot but the poor man never won anything, and today we have won,” she said.
The lottery is held on December 22 and thousands of people watch the live televised broadcast, with schoolchildren singing out the winning numbers.
Others line up overnight at the live draw dressed in costumes to secure a good seat.
Despite the low chances of winning – around 1 in a 100,000 – a study by a Madrid university revealed almost three-quarters of Spaniards aged between 18 and 75 played the lottery in 2015.
- with Reuters
