Second prize in Spain's big Christmas lottery reaches Malaga province

2016-12-30 06:00:00

El Gordo, the top prize in Spain’s traditional Christmas lottery, passed the province of Malaga by on Thursday. In fact nearly all the tickets bearing the winning number, 66513, had been sold from official lottery outlets in Madrid.
Nevertheless much of the excitement generated by the big Christmas lottery stems from the huge number of prizes; the winnings are shared by thousands of people.
Some of the second prize, 04536, did reach southern Spain, sharing nearly ten million euros in prize money around the province of Malaga.
Much of this fell on Fuengirola where the state lottery shop in Calle Condes de San Isidro sold 52 of the 20-euro ‘décimo’ tickets, each of which is now worth 125,000 euros
“We’re delighted. It’s the biggest prize we’ve given out ever,” said manager Santiago Garrido.
Meanwhile in Estepona, the lottery shop in the Carrefour shopping centre sold ten ‘décimo’ tickets, worth a total of 1,250,000 euros.
“When I saw the number on the television I was so happy. I didn’t expect to share out so much money after only being open for a few months,” said lottery administrator Rosario Nieto.
A seller’s dream
In fact on Christmas lottery morning in Spain the first to crack open the bottles of bubbly are not the winners but the people who have sold the tickets. In this lottery geography is key, with all the numbers assigned to official shops, or ‘administraciones’, around the country.
While modern technology now allows customers to buy any number they want, these are still associated with a city, town or village around the country.
Therefore a shop that sells a winning number immediately gains prestige and attracts future customers. If one ‘administración’ has been lucky enough to sell several top prizes, then the attraction is greater.
The lottery draw took place for four festive hours on Thursday morning as schoolchildren from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school sang out the numbers and prizes as the balls came out of huge drums in the Teatro Real in Madrid.
As the big prizes dropped out among the many smaller ones, news spread of celebrations around the country. The shop in El Chaparral, in La Cala de Mijas, distributed 250,000 euros as part of the second prize as did a shop in Calle Galveston in Marbella. Other winning second prize tickets were sold in Alfarnate, Antequera, Estepona, Fuengirola, Torremolinos, La Cala del Moral, Marbella, San Luis de Sabinillas and Vélez-Málaga. Each place was the scene of celebrations.
“Here we’re toasting the prize. We’re still waiting to see whether any of our regulars have won so we can congratulate them,” said seller José Antonio Madroñal, in Sabinillas.
In the case of Torre del Mar, lottery seller Sergio Campos explained how he sold his winning ticket on his machine; “And I’m almost certain I know who to, it’s an elderly person who always buys the same number, because the last numbers coincide with the start of the Civil War,” he explained.
The first of the big prizes to hit the province of Malaga was one of the two fourth prizes (59444) which left one winner with 20,000 euros in an outlet in Malaga city. Later the same shop, in the Camino de San Rafael area, learned it had also sold a second-prize-winning ticket, and all that just two months after it opened.
Tickets carrying the second fourth prize number (07211) were sold in Alhaurín de la Torre.
Fifth prizes brought good news for sellers and buyers in Torre del Mar, Benalmádena Costa, El Ingenio in Vélez-Málaga, Torre del Mar, Fuengirola, San Pedro Alcántara and Avenida de La Luz in Malaga city.
Toilet stop millions
It took almost three hours of lottery draw before excitement in the children’s voices revealed the top prize - the famous El Gordo. Just before midday the number 66513 coincided with the ball indicating the top prize, bringing each ‘décimo’ ticket holder 400,000 euros. This is the first time that a number ending in the much-loved or hated 13 has won El Gordo and the tickets were all sold from an outlet in the Acacias area of Madrid. However twenty million euros of the prize money went to Abadiño in Vizcaya, where a seller distributed 50 tickets they had exchanged with the Madrid shop.
Closer to home one Ronda resident was celebrating with his three ‘décimos’ of El Gordo. Asking to remain anonymous, he told SUR that he had bought the tickets when he stopped at a roadside bar to go to the toilet while driving near Bornos in November.
“I only stopped for five minutes. I bought a bottle of water and saw the number; I always buy number 13,” he said on Thursday.source surinenglish