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25-12-2025
MADRID: Spain’s Christmas lottery has been welcomed as an “injection of hope” in the northwest of the country, where the jackpot handed out hundreds of millions of euros just months after wildfires had caused devastation.
Most of the first-prize-winning tickets in the lottery, known as El Gordo, had been bought by people in small towns in the province of Leon.
A single ticket, or decimo, costing €20 (£17), is worth €400,000 (£349,484) if it bears the winning number, in this case 79432. Decimos come in strips of 10 and when many strips of the same number are sold to a group of neighbors or workmates, there is potential for a massive jackpot.
People in the town of La Baneza shared out €468m (£409m).
Among the recipients were members of a local football club in the town, which has a population of around 11,000. The jackpot came four months after forest fires had torn through Leon, burning 8,000 hectares (31 sq. miles) of land surrounding La Baneza and killing a local man, 35-year-old Abel Ramos.
The sparsely populated, heavily forested north-west of Spain is used to wildfires, although during this record-breaking year, the area was particularly severely affected. Firefighters battled enormous blazes in Leon and the neighboring Galicia region throughout much of August and during the summer 0.8 percent of the country’s total surface area was burned.
According to the mayor of the town, Javier Carrera, the lottery win “means for La Baneza an injection of excitement and hope,” he told Spanish media. Carrera also mentioned the closure this year of a local sugar-beet factory which caused the loss of dozens of jobs.
Another town in the Leon province that was heavily affected by the summer’s fires, Villablino, also took a massive share of the jackpot, receiving €200 million (£175m).
“We needed some good news,” said the mayor, Mario Rivas.
On top of the blazes, five local men were killed in two separate mining accidents in nearby Asturias this year.
“It doesn’t make up for the loss of the lives of our friends, but this shows us that there can also be good news,” said Rivas.
Most of the winning tickets in Villablino were sold by a local Alzheimer’s association.
In addition, the town of La Pola de Gordon, also in Leon and with a population of 3,000, shared out 60 million euros. Sixty-four million euros of jackpot money also went to a working-class district in Madrid.
In Villablino, Maribel Martín had one of the winning decimos, worth €400,000 (£349,484). She was out doing grocery shopping when her son called her to give her the good news.
“We were really down and 200 million euros is a wonderful thing,” she said
She is clear what she wants to do with the prize money. “Spread it around a bit and enjoy life,” she said.
Earlier, Spain’s annual Christmas lottery has paid out €56m ($58m; £47m) to residents of a struggling southern town where almost a third of the population are out of work.
Much of the winnings in Pinos Puente, in Granada, came from tickets sold by the local branch of the tiny United Left political coalition.
El Gordo, the world’s biggest Christmas lottery, has no single jackpot, with winnings distributed among thousands.
This year the prizes totaled €2.31bn.
Each ticket has a five-digit number, reprinted numerous times in so-called series, costing €200. Because of the price, they are divided into 10 sub-tickets (“decimo”), each costing €20. (Int’l News Desk)
