WORLD> Europe
Spaniards feed big, fat Xmas lottery
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-22 07:45

Spaniards are snapping up tickets in the annual Christmas lottery billed as the world's richest, despite a global economic slowdown that has saddled Spain with Europe's highest unemployment rate.

The strong demand for 'El Gordo' or 'The Fat One' bucks the trend in other European nations where cash-strapped consumers have dropped lottery tickets from holiday shopping lists, causing a slump in sales.

An estimated four in five Spaniards bought tickets for the lottery in 2007, spending on average 64 euros ($88) each for a total of 2.87 billion euros.

The state lottery commission predicts they will spend roughly the same amount this year despite hard times.

Why? Partly because El Gordo is a strong tradition stretching back to 1812, said commission head Gonzalo Fernandez Rodriguez. It has become as much a part of Christmas as the Biblical Magi - the three wise men who in Spain bring children gifts on January 6 to mark the Christian feast of the Epiphany - and Cava, Spain's version of champagne, he said.

"It is difficult to conceive of Christmas in Spain without the Christmas lottery," Rodriguez said.

El Gordo is also designed to give as many people as possible a windfall before the holidays. Seventy percent intake goes back into cash prizes - far more than in other state-run lotteries used to finance social projects.

Instead of a few jackpots, there are millions of cash prizes ranging from the 20-euro face value of a ticket to 300,000 euros for the first-prize number.

The draw is always held on December 22. This year just over 26 million prizes worth a total of 2.32 billion euros will be doled out.

Although other draws around the world have bigger individual top prizes, lottery specialists rank El Gordo as the world's richest lottery for the total sum paid out.

Tickets go on sale in July. On the morning of the draw, Spain comes to a virtual standstill as crowds huddle around television sets and radios in bars, living rooms and offices for more than three hours to see who gets lucky.

With Spain posting an unemployment rate of 12.8 percent in October - the highest rate in the 27-nation EU - as a decade-long property boom comes to a halt, the economic slowdown has served as a selling point for tickets this year.

"For the mortgage! I have El Gordo for the mortgage," a ticket seller named Marta called out recently to passers-by on a busy square in the Spanish capital.

"Of course in the back of your mind there is always the hope that you might get lucky," said 27-year-old Arantxa Jimenez, as she queued outside the "Dona Manolita" ticket shop. The shop regularly posts one of the country's highest ticket sales for El Gordo. But this year sales are even higher after the shop sold one of the top-prize tickets in 2007.

The faith in El Gordo is such that after Japanese auto maker Nissan announced in October it would cut 1,680 jobs at its Barcelona factory, the workers there pooled together to buy tickets with the number 01680, Spanish media reported.

The buying frenzy in Spain contrasts with that in Germany, Europe's largest economy, where demand for all lottery tickets is down, or in France where households spend on average about half Spain's on lottery tickets and gambling.

"Lottery sales in Germany depend on the economic climate. Now it is not good and here people prefer to save," a spokesman for the German state lottery commission said.