El Gordo, Spain’s traditional Christmas lottery, announced a number of winners on Thursday in various districts. The owners of ticket number 05490 received the lottery’s first prize. This ticket’s earnings come to €400,000 ($425,000), or around €325,000 after taxes. According to a report by El Pais on Thursday, ticket number 04074 was awarded the second prize, and its owners will get €125,000. The third-place winner is ticket 45250, whose owners will get €50,000.
Compared to 2.41 billion the previous year, the total prize money for “El Gordo” reached €2.52 billion ($2.67 billion). Young students from the San Ildefonso school chose the winning numbers in a lottery draw that was nationally aired at Madrid’s Teatro Real opera theater. They sang the numbers to the audience.
A woman who was born in Peru and is unemployed as well as a guy from Gambia who sailed over the Mediterranean to Spain in 2017 are among the winners of the Christmas lottery.
After her ticket number was revealed, reporters swarmed the mother, who was later identified as Perla Gavidia. Gavidia said that she purchased 95 tickets after losing her job at a cafe in 2020. But only one of them contained the winning number, 05490, according to the news agency Reuters.
The mother, who was standing next to her two children informed reporters that she planned to use the money, which totaled €400,000 before taxes, to buy a new home, fund their education, as well as give to the Catholic Church.
Ibrahim Cante, a native of the Gambia, won the second prize in the lottery in Catalonia with ticket number 04074. According to the Guardian, Cante, a professional musician, declared that he would purchase a recording studio with $125,000 in earnings. He continued by saying that this was the first lottery ticket he had purchased since coming to Spain.
‘El Gordo’ has been happening since 1812 when Spain was under French occupation during the Napoleonic Wars. The lottery was designed to raise funds to fight the war.
There are long lines outside lottery offices for weeks before the winners are revealed and ticket sales start months before the draw. The lottery is significant because Spain like many other European nations is experiencing a problem with rising living costs and stagnant earnings.