Today, the biggest lottery draw in the world will take place in Spain, with a total prize pool of €2.59 billion ($3 billion). Officially called the Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad (Extraordinary Christmas Lottery), it is usually referred to as El Gordo, or “The Fat One,” the Spanish name given to the biggest prize in any lottery. It’s a huge part of the Christmas celebrations, in which an estimated 70–90% of Spaniards participate, each spending an average of €70 ($82).
Unlike major British, European and American lotteries, in which individuals “compete” against each other for a massive jackpot, El Gordo is about community. People play together—as co-workers, regulars at a bar, members of clubs and teams, or even as entire neighborhoods (my local tobacconist has a sign in the window urging people not to miss out on the “número del barrio Santiago”). Its raffle-style system creates thousands of winners rather than just one; hence El Gordo’s slogan: “The greatest prize is sharing.”
As a result, the top prize of €4 million ($4.7 million) is dwarfed by those of other lotteries, such as the $2.04 billion won by Californian Edwin Castro in 2022’s Powerball, or the €250 million ($291 million) pocketed by three anonymous winners in this year’s Euromillions. But whereas the odds of winning either of those jackpots are 1 in 192 million and 1 in 139 million, respectively, you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of winning El Gordo (although it’s still more likely that you’ll be struck by lightning).
Every ticket, or billete, in Spain’s Christmas lottery carries a unique five-digit number, from 00000 to 99999. Because there are only 100,000 combinations, each billete is printed in multiple editions or “series”: in 2024 there were 193 series—i.e., 193 physical editions of each of the 100,000 tickets bearing a unique number. A full billete costs €200, but each one is divided into ten smaller tickets known as décimos (tenths) and priced at €20, which is what most people buy. In 2024, the €4 million El Gordo was paid out 193 times, meaning that all of the 1,930 people who had bought a décimo won €400,000 each. The second prize is worth €1,250,000, so each of those 193 décimos was worth €125,000—and so on, down to hundreds of smaller prizes known as la pedrea (“the stones” or “the pebbles”).
One quirk of El Gordo is that a single number—in some or all of its series—is often sold at just one location. Last year, the winning ticket of 72480 was sold entirely in the northern city of Logroño, capital of the wine-making Rioja region, and all of the fifth and sixth prize-winning billetes had been purchased from two kiosks in Madrid. Sometimes a big win can transform the economic situation of a community, especially in the south, where unemployment is a persistent problem. In 2016, in Pinos Puente near Granada, 451 décimos of the second prize-winning ticket paid out €125,000 each—a massive boost to a town in which 29% of the population was out of work.
El Gordo is the world’s second longest-running lottery, behind the Netherlands’ Staatsloterji, which started in 1726. It was first held on December 18, 1812, in the southwestern city of Cádiz, the home of Spain’s government-in-exile during the Napoleonic Wars. Though it raised much-needed money for cannons and bullets, some thought it morally questionable. Agustín de Argüelles, a member of the national congress, claimed that it “would be desirable to adopt more decent means… to sustain public necessities because the lottery, raffles and other games are resources that conspire with immorality and, as a consequence, are incompatible with the virtuous character that should be what distinguishes Spaniards in the future.” Argüelles’s fears proved unfounded: over two centuries on, El Gordo is surely one of the most wholesome instances of mass-gambling on the planet.
After Spain emerged victorious against Napoleonic France in 1814, the Christmas lottery’s headquarters were moved from Cádiz to Madrid, where they’ve remained ever since. This much-loved tradition even continued throughout Spain’s 1936–39 Civil War, during which each side held its own draw. Lottery politics erupted again in 2014, when Catalonia’s pro-independence government set up its own rival to El Gordo, naming it La Grossa (Catalan for “The Fat Woman”). La Grossa’s draw is held on December 31, and the most coveted of its 80,000 numbers is 01714—a reference to September 11, 1714, when Philip V won the War of Spanish Succession and imposed rule on Catalonia from Madrid (Catalans also celebrate their National Day on September 11).
Part of El Gordo’s continued appeal lies in the draw itself, which since 1957 has been televised. Two spherical gold cages are placed on the stage of the capital’s Teatro Royal, in one of which are 100,000 balls with the ticket numbers, in the other 1,087 balls bearing the prize amounts. Each time a pair of balls is released in front of the live audience, the number and amount are sung out—in a hypnotic, chant-like cadence—by two pupils from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school. Suspense is generated by the fact that you never know when the Gordo itself will be sung out: it could be the very first number, or the last in a process that takes several hours. So deeply-rooted is this tradition that San Ildefonso pupils were exempted from 2015 legislation passed to protect minors from gambling advertising campaigns.
The flipside of El Gordo’s communal aspect, of course, is that someone risks being left out—and I’ve seen this happen. My parents live in Villanueva de la Concepción, a rural village near Málaga with a population of about 3,500. At lunchtime on December 22, 2015, we went down to the main square for a drink to find people popping bottles of champagne, dancing, and singing. We soon learned that a local collective of about 50 people had bought 150 décimos of the winning number, bagging €60 million between them. Several won the top décimo prize of €400,000.
A couple of local bar owners were amongst the luckiest ones—but not, as it turned out, the bad-tempered one who was serving us. Salvador—Salvi to his locals—had declined to participate, probably to save a bit of money at an expensive time of year. I don’t think he’s ever recovered. Sharing might be the greatest prize for El Gordo’s victors; but for losers it’s the cruelest punishment.
The post Sharing the Wealth? was first published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.
