Waiting for...el gordo

If in Christmas time you hear a Spaniard mentioning the word "gordo", he is referring neither to a particularly fat person nor to the former Brazilian football player Ronaldo, who was called in that way exactly for his excessive weight. As a matter of fact, el gordo is the first prize of the Christmas national lottery, a real institution which every year keeps millions of Spanish people dreaming in front of the television. In fact, as the draw usually takes place on the 22nd of December, the Christmas lottery has become part of the traditional Spanish Christmas.

This year I was myself among those millions of people waiting for the fatidic numbers. Actually, it cost me to understand the mechanism ruling the lottery. The ticket you buy for 20 euro, indeed, is not called billete (ticket), as would seem normal, but rather décimo, as it represents ideally the tenth part of a ticket. Many people usually buy more than a décimo, as the chance of a win for a single one are very low (since 2011 the lottery consists in 100,000 numbers). El gordo amounts to the fabulous sum of 4 million euro (which means 400,000 euro for each décimo of the winning ticket), but there are several consolation prizes which are more than enough to cheer up the Christmas holiday for many families.

Actually, lotteries are a component not only of the traditional Christmas, but in general of the Spanish every-day life. Many sorts of raffles, indeed, are organized every day, week or month, by several associations. If in Italy we have other sort of games organised by the state system (called Lotto or Superenalotto), in Spain lotteries are the undisputed rulers. That is why you can find on the streets a good number of strange-looking booths selling tickets of every sort. If on the one side they represent a good way for the government to raise money, on the other hand some people end up developing a sort of addiction and waste a lot of money in them. However, it must be said that some of these raffle are organized in connection to some charitable organization, which allocate part of the proceeds to good causes. It is the case, for example, of the famous ONCE (Organizaciòn Nacional de Ciegos Españoles) lottery, run by the National Association for Spanish Blind people).

Being already back in Italy, I could not watch the draw on tv, as most Spaniards did (according to an official source, the share of the special program devoted to the raffle was 50%). Instead, I keep an eye on the numbers published on the official website as the children gradually drew the lots. Of course, finally I was not among the lucky ones, but after all...it is the luck of the draw! Anyway, apart from the pride in possessing one of the tickets (which look quite nice, as you can see in the picture), the experience helped me understanding better how a typical Spanish custom work. And now...time for Christmas! (or for the New Year's lottery?).

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