Customs - Draw for the Spanish Christmas lottery has begun
Spain watches spellbound: In Madrid, the annual drawing of the lucky numbers for the famous Christmas lottery began punctually at 9.00 a.m. this morning. Tickets could still be bought until 10 p.m. the night before. In the venerable Teatro Real opera house in Madrid, pupils from the San Ildefonso boarding school announced the results - singing as they have done for generations.
A total of almost 2.6 billion euros awaits winners on Friday. Most of the tickets are sold in Spain, but more and more foreigners are also taking part online.
The ceremony lasts up to four hours, as many smaller prizes are also drawn. The main prize, called "El Gordo" (the big one), is four million euros for a whole ticket. It is paid out 185 times, as each of the 100,000 ticket numbers has been sold the same number of times.
Launched in Cadiz in 1812, the lottery is considered to be the oldest in the world and also the largest due to the total amount played out. However, the individual prizes are not as high as in some other lotteries, but there are many winners.
In Spain, the Christmas lottery is a huge spectacle: some people buy their tickets in July, but most people queue up in front of the more than 10,000 sales outlets in the days leading up to Christmas, chatting with neighbors or even strangers. They are all united by the hope of hitting the jackpot.
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Source: www.stern.de
