Merry Christmas 2023 | World's biggest lottery is all about sharing

So, what makes gambling on the lottery so attractive to Spaniards? The answer is more in keeping with the Christmas spirit than one might imagine. Almost no one buys a lottery ticket in isolation here – betting on El Gordo is a shared excitement between families, co-workers, bar-clientele and other groups.

To understand how the system works, requires one to revisit some middle school ratio and proportions mathematics. Each lottery ticket is worth €200, but these are sold in fractions of 10, or a décimo. Every décimo on the ticket has the same five-digit number, and that same number can be repeated dozens of times across several full tickets. Consequently, the prize is divided among everyone who shares that same number.

Preschoolers around the world are taught how sharing is caring. And Spain’s Christmas lottery’s slogan confirms the adage: “El mayor premio es compartirlo” (“The greatest prize is sharing”). Many families, groups of friends, or office workers chip in for a décimo to be pooled among all in the event of a win. But it doesn’t just end with décimos. Bars, restaurants, and shops also sell participaciones, which are portions of a full lottery ticket even smaller than décimos, for less money.

The Spanish version of scrooge is the one person who refuses to buy into a communal potluck of tickets, only to find themselves left out in the cold when the rest of the group celebrates a lottery victory. The local media spend almost as much newsprint on the losers as the winners.

Among the most famous of these stories was the 2012 incident, when a Greek filmmaker, Costis Mitsotkasis, became the only person in the small town of Sodeto to not have purchased a lottery ticket. The winning jackpot number that year was the one that Sodeto’s 250 residents, belonging to 70 households, had all purchased shares of from the local homeowners’ association. Each household took home more than €100,000 in prize money that year. Except poor Mr Mitsotkasis who has since become a warning to those who refuse to get into the spirit of the Christmas Lottery.

(Photo by Barcex via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

I talked with 70-year-old, Fernando, a retired typesetter who had already been queuing in front of a central Madrid, ticket booth, Doña Manolita for six hours by the time we chatted. The booth, started by the eponymous Doña Manolita in 1904, is today, amongst the most popular spots to get a ticket. Even deceased, having passed away in 1951, Doña Manolita could give Taylor Swift a run for her money with the queues she generates - people have been known to line up overnight to cadge a ticket from the booth.

Fernando said that he has bought a lottery ticket every December for the last 56 years, ever since he began working at the age of 14. He is yet to win a prize, but Juan, a bearded café-owner from the northeastern town of Zaragoza, who was standing right behind, had been luckier. He had won the fifth prize in the 1998 Christmas lottery, which was worth 3 million pesetas at the time, the equivalent of about 20,000 euros. Ever since, he continues to buy an array of tickets annually. The fun is in the process, not the outcome, he explained.

The lottery has a long and storied history in Spain. It was begun as a way for the state to raise money for the Spanish troops fighting against Napoleon’s armies, without the discontentment elicited by direct taxation. The first draw took place in the southern port city of Cádiz in 1812. The lottery became so dear to Spaniards that during the Civil War of the late 1930s, each side organized a draw - the Republicans in Barcelona and the Fascists in Burgos.

Even today, the proceeds of the lottery, after the prize money has been distributed, help to fund the state budget. In essence, the lottery is an innovative form of voluntary, indirect taxation. Because of it, the term “popular taxation” is not an oxymoron in Spain, at least during Christmas time! (Since 2013 there has been a 20 percent direct tax on all winnings over a certain amount. Last year anything over 40,000 euros was taxed.)

Given that tickets for El Gordo go on sale in July, the excitement surrounding the draw takes up a good portion of the year. Some 75 percent of the Spanish population tune in to watch the draw. The whole process lasts 4 hours and involves singing children, yet another unique feature of Spanish Christmas.

The winning numbers are sung aloud by students at Madrid’s San Ildefonso Elementary School, a tradition that dates back to the school’s former role as an orphanage. The orphans would make their way through the streets of Madrid singing Christmas carols, or so the story goes. They drew the attention of city officials, who gave them the task of drawing the winning numbers, reasoning that orphans would not cheat the system.

In 2022, Ibrahim Cante, a Gambian man who came to Europe by boat seeking refuge in 2017 and Perla Gavidi, an unemployed mother of two were among those who got lucky. This reporter had still not bought her ticket at the time of writing - time to head to Doña Manolita!