Lotteries have two hundreds of years of background in Spain. El Gordo is the common name for the Spanish Christmas lottery. The English translation of the phrase is the fat one. The title reflects the enormous sum of money that can be won. The lottery by itself is drawn each year simply just before Christmas, on the 22nd December, it has the largest prize of any lottery in the globe!
While Spain spends more per head~ on betting than anywhere else in the earth it is not because they are habitual gamblers but basically that the Chistmas lottery is a custom in which the entire country partakes!
The Spanish Christmas Lottery is a national lottery game organized every year since 1812. The name Sorteo de Navidad was used for the first time in 1892. In 2006, if all of the tickets were bought, the total amount payout of prizes would be worth more than €2.142 billion.
Since December 18, 1812, the Christmas Lottery drawings are held corresponding to precisely the same procedure each year. In the National Lottery Hall of Madrid, pupils of the San Ildefonso school draw the numbers and corresponding prizes and they sing the results aloud in front of the community. On the morning of the 22nd of December each year Spain pretty much comes to a standstill and the regular noise and chatter is replaced by the sound of children singing. The state-run Televisión Española and Radio Nacional de España and other media broadcast the complete draw. The public taking part in the event are typically dressed up in lottery-related clothing and hats.
Little wood balls are drawn from two large golden cages. The larger one consists of all the probable numbers from 00001 – 85,000 from the draw, and the smaller the actual prizes they win. So a number is picked, and then the prize that number wins. The two-vessels technique was the classic one in Spanish lottery, but now is only used in the Christmas special lottery. The rest of the weekly and special draws during the year use five vessels with ten balls each, from where the five figures of the winning number are picked.
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