Spaniards kept waiting for winning number in El Gordo Christmas Lottery
Top prize eventually goes to ticket 13437 in dying moments of draw
Millions across Spain eager to find out whether 2014 would be the year they scooped the multi-million-euro jackpot in the enormous Christmas Lottery had to wait longer than ever this time round.
The winner of El Gordo (The Fat One) main prize in this year’s draw, which took place on Monday morning, only emerged from the tombola at 1pm, as the audience watching events unfold live inside Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house was already growing impatient following several hours of waiting.
Waiting characterized the morning with over an hour passing before the first main prize came out
This year’s lucky five-digit figure was 13437, parts of which were sold in Madrid, Cádiz, Albacete, Murcia, A Coruña, La Rioja, León, Lugo and Cáceres. Every lottery ticket is divided into 10 identical segments, or décimos, and each part related to the winning number is worth €400,000 – or €320,000 after taxes.
Second prize went to number 92845, and third to 07637. The two fourth prizes went to 07617 and 67009.
Waiting had characterized the morning with over an hour passing before the first major winner of the draw came out: one of the five fifth prizes, each worth a total €60,000 a ticket, which went to number 46984. After that came a flurry of other big winning tickets, just not El Gordo.
There was emotion along the way as Maguette, one of the pupils from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school that each year supplies the 11 boys and 11 girls who sing out the winning numbers, broke down in tears after stumbling over her recital of the number 58052, one of the many winners of the smaller €1,000 prizes.
It remains to be seen where all this year’s major wins have fallen, though curiously one of the fifth prizes, for ticket number 91363, went to the supermarket in the Teruel town from which the man who rammed his explosives-laden car into the headquarters of Spain’s ruling Popular Party on Friday hailed.
This year’s lottery handed out a total of €2.24 billion in prize money. The official list of all prizewinners is available as a PDF download here.
