A low fi buyer's guide to the Christmas lottery

A couple of chums were talking about buying their weekly Euromillones (EuroMillions) ticket. I asked after their Christmas lottery purchases. They sort of knew what I meant but they sort of didn't. I saw an opening for a blog.

Just to be even handed O.N.C.E., the organisation for people with a visual impairment, run a Christmas lottery and there's a State lottery, el Niño, to coincide with Three Kings. I'm sure they are all fine and dandy but the one that counts, the big one, is the fat one - el Gordo - drawn on 22 December.

In truth, el Gordo isn't quite so fat. A winning ticket is worth 4 million euros. The thing that most people buy though isn't a ticket, it's a decimo; a tenth of a ticket. If you buy a ticket from one of the State Lottery Administraciones and you pay 20€ for it then you have a decimo. 

If you want to have a go you will see the ticket/decimos (I'm going to stop that now) on sale all over the place. As well as in the lottery administrations they're in shops and bars and petrol stations; in fact if you have contact with any Spanish organisation near Christmas you will, likely, be the target of a high pressure sales pitch. That's because the Friends of the Wine, the Pigeon Fanciers and every other group in Spain buys tickets to sell on. They raise funds by adding a few euros to the ticket's face value. The 20€ decimo from your Badminton Club will probably cost 23€ or 24€. With a decimo, if you win the fat one, you'll only get 400,000€, a tenth of four million euros. Actually it will be less because the tax people will take 72,000€ of your haul.

As I said a full ticket, or series, consists of 10 decimos and an individual decimo costs 20€. This means a full ticket costs 200€. Each decimo from the same ticket carries the same five figure number. In fact, this year, there will be 180 series of each number so there are, potentially, 1,800 decimos with the same number. This is why the Christmas lottery is so popular. Unlike most lotteries, where there is one big winner, el Gordo spreads its largesse through hundreds and thousands of people with a good chance of a decent, if not spectacular, payout.

The lottery tickets come from an official vendor, an administración. Each administración, or lottery shop, buys as many tickets as it thinks it can sell. They always buy a lot of the same number so the numbers tend to be grouped in a geographical area. Imagine that you're the boss of a medium sized firm. You may buy 10 series of decimos, all with the same number, and give one to everyone who works for you. If you're a less altruistic boss you might sell the tickets in the staff room. Even then it's likely that a good percentage of your workforce will end up with the same lottery number. Families often do the thing where senior family members buy and distribute numbers around the family. Imagine what happens if the number comes up. Imagine that the winning number is spread amongst cousins, uncles and grandmas, that all the workers at the engineering works have the same winning number or all the players and season ticket holders of the town football club, the domino playing pensioners club or indeed lots of people living in the same town. The big prize, 400,000€ per decimo, may not be a fortune but it would pay off most mortgages and leave a bit over for a nice holiday and a new BMW. And imagine the effect if, say, 200 people had the winning number in La Romana, Pinoso or Monóvar.

The Christmas lottery numbers are drawn as whole numbers, like raffle tickets. There is an actual ball with the five figure number engraved on it. On 22 December the children from San Ildefonso School pick up the number as it rolls out of a big tombola thing called a bombo. There is another bombo which has balls for all the prizes and they are engraved with cash values. So the first child sings out the number which matches a decimo and a second child sings out a cash amount. Most of the prizes are just 1,000€ but there are five prizes that have a greater value, including el Gordo. As some of the prizes are repeated there are actually 15 "important" numbers as well as lots and lots of other prizes. Bear in mind that there are 1,800 of each number so even if the prize is just 1,000€ there are potentially 1,800 people who will get 100€ back for their 20€ stake. Even if you don't win el Gordo the chances of you getting something back, una pedrea, are much, much higher than in most lotteries

So, all you have to do is go to a lottery administración, to a bar, stop that bloke in the street who has a number in his hat, join a sewing circle or the local Scalextric racers and you'll soon have a decimo. You can even do it online if you want. Once you have your ticket or tickets you just wait till December 22nd. If you want you can watch the draw on the telly or via streaming or listen to it on the radio but most people watch a few minutes and then check their tickets later. As well as the official site all the newspapers and telly channels have online number checkers but if you are digitally challenged just take the number to any lottery shop and they'll tell you if you have a winner or not. 

There is another way you may end up participating in the draw and that is if someone gives you, or sells you, a fraction of a decimo. A very typical example might be that a petrol station gives you a  "participación" for every 50€ worth of petrol you buy. Participaciones/participations vary in value but they are often worth 50c or maybe 1€, though I saw one the other day on sale for 2.40€. What the garage has done is to buy some decimos. They then given away a ticket with the same number. If the garage decimo wins in the lottery then anyone with one of their participaciones can claim their percentage of the winning ticket.

Oh, and if you decide to get your ticket from your favourite bar you could also get involved in another Spanish Christmas tradition; the cesta. Cesta means basket and most bars have a sort of Christmas hamper loaded with food, booze, choccies etc. It's usually just a case of picking a numbered square and writing your name and phone numbers in it. 

There are stacks of older blogs about el gordo and the christmas lottery. Just put the words in the search box at the left top of the page and you'll find several.

Fat chance

As usual we won nothing. Twitter was alive with complaints about the state broadcaster's presenters talking over the numbers and full of praise for the coverage on the commercial channel la Sexta. On the telly the little girl who called the winning number was joyfully sobbing her eyes out whilst her mother, in the stalls of the same theatre, grinned all over her face. In Almansa, in the hairdresser's where the owner had handed out fractions of the ticket to her regulars, they were celebrating, in the old people's home where nearly everyone had won a woman said she was going to go and find a boyfriend and all over Spain people popped the corks on sparkling wine, toasted their good luck and danced for the TV cameras.  The usual crop of Christmas Lottery stories.

The first event of the Spanish Christmas, el Gordo, the one that hands out lots and lots of money in relatively small packages all over Spain has come and gone.

I thought I couldn't do yet another blog about the lottery until I had a look back at the December posts. All I could find are the entries from 2007  and 2006. The draw does get a mention in other years but only as a partial entry amongst talk of mince pies and polvorones. It would have been a good thing to write about but it's just after eleven in the evening now. We went out to Murcia and, to be honest, I don't feel like writing a full entry from scratch.

The 2007 post though is still pretty accurate. The boys and girls from San Ildefonso school, who sing the numbers and prizes, have different uniforms and the top prize is now 400,000€ or 323,000€ (I think) after tax but the lottery hasn't changed that much in 11 years.

I was thinking about what I'd do with my winnings just before I got up this morning. Pretty basic stuff, a new motor, a bit of driving around Spain and probably back to Cartagena. Not a sausage though, as I said. I suppose I could buy a ticket for el Niño in January. Different but similar. Still enough for a new car.

They think it's all over

I spoke to my mum on the phone today. She said that she'd had a good Christmas and New Year but that she was glad to be back to normal. Later I popped in to town. I went to a cake shop that I've only ever been in once before, that time it was to order a birthday cake for Maggie, one with icing and a message and candles. This time it was to order a roscón. I can't remember whether I ordered the custard filling (crema) or the cream filling (nata) but either way I'm expecting better quality than the ones we usually buy from the supermarket. The last time we bought a baker's shop roscón was when we lived it Cartagena. I have a vague and nagging memory that I was shocked at the price then but, hey-ho, Christmas tradition and all that. The sensible eating can start when Christmas is over after the 6th.

I've written about Roscones before, the traditional Roscón de Reyes cake, a bit like a big doughnut that gets eaten on Kings, at Epiphany, on 6th January when the Three Wise Men have delivered the presents to the baby Jesus and to all the good boys and girls. The bad ones get coal so the Kings are obviously more generous than Santa who leaves nothing for bad children!

As I passed the lottery shop I did something else I don't usually do. I went in and bought a lottery ticket for el Niño draw, the Child, the second Christmas lottery. The prizes for el Niño are less than for el Gordo Christmas draw on 22nd December but, I think, there's a better chance of winning the big prize and excellent chances of, at least, getting your money back (1:3). I read that the chances of winning the 200,000€ top prize are something like 1:100,000 which is about the same as the chance of being stung to death by a bee or poisoned to death by a snake. They had a number that had obviously been spurned by Pinoseros in general, there was a caricature promoting the number, it was parodied as el Feo, the Ugly. Obviously enough that's the number I bought.

So, if the roscón does turn out to be really expensive when I pick it up on the 5th I can always hope that just getting the 20€ ticket money back from the draw on the 6th will at least pay for it. Or I can hope that the fine taste of the "home baked" version will be enough to make me forget this last gasp Christmas spending.

Losing my grip

Manuel looks like an ordinary bloke. He lives in a normal sort of flat in a normal looking working class district of Madrid. His local bar is a few minutes walk from his front door. Times are tough in Spain. A few days before when Antonio, the bar owner, asked Manu if he wanted his usual lottery ticket for the Christmas draw he put it off. He didn't really have the 20€ for the tenth part of a ticket. Now it's the day of the draw. In the bar everyone is celebrating. The bar's number has come up and all the locals are richer. Manuel's wife urges her husband to go to the bar, to congratulate everyone. What's done is done. No good brooding on what might have been. Manuel wraps up against the cold, goes to the bar and pushes through the happy crowd to congratulate Antonio on his luck. Manuel turns down a glass of bubbly and asks for his usual coffee. Job done and in no mood to join in the jollity Manuel asks for the bill. The surprise is that the bill is twenty one euros for the one euro coffee. Antonio kept back a twenty euro ticket for his friend - just in case.

Standing by your pals is what you do in tough times. The annual Christmas advert for the state lottery. A message about not losing hope and about sharing. To be honest I hadn't noticed the ad on the telly because advert time is tea making, toilet or email check time. It was Maggie who pointed it out to me. In turn she'd been told about the advert by her intercambio - the person she does half an hour of English in return for half an hour of Spanish with. I searched it out on YouTube to have a look.

Last year the lottery ad featured a handful of singers and was roundly pilloried and parodied. I had a conversation about it with several of my adult students and with my two intercambios of the time. This year there was a bit of the Manuel Antonio ad that I couldn't make out and I was reduced to messaging one of my Cartagena friends for help with the wording.

It's easy enough to keep up to date in a media way with what's happening here but there is a second sort of news - the stuff that people talk about down the pub or send WhatsApp messages about. Until coming back to Culebrón I'd had access to those conversations through workmates, intercambios and students. Things have changed with my new job. Technically it isn't even a job, I'm now self employed and I sell my services to the language school. That aside the real change has been in the profile of the students. Most are now children or teenagers and only one group of adults has sufficient English to maintain an ordinary conversation. Of the two people I normally work alongside one is as English as me and the other is a teenager herself. Keeping up with the informal news has become a little more difficult.