‘The Fat One’ returns €25m to Catalonia

The re­sult of the Christ­mas state lot­tery, El Gordo or “The Fat One”, were the stingi­est for years for Cat­alo­nia. Barely 7% of the €364 mil­lion spent on the lot­tery came back to the coun­try, which was not helped by it be­com­ing in­creas­ingly atom­ised to help on­line sales. In fact, Cat­alo­nia gam­bled 7.4% less money than last year, re­ceiv­ing €25 mil­lion back in big prizes.

In pre­vi­ous years, with more money gam­bled, Cata­lans re­cov­ered be­tween a quar­ter and a third of the money in­vested in big prizes. Thirty-five dec­i­mal parts of the main prize left some €13 mil­lion in some 15 lo­cal­i­ties, above all in Barcelona and in Sabadell. The lot­tery sell­ers on car­rers Navas de Tolosa and Sicília sold most of the dec­i­mal parts for the big prize, along with oth­ers in Sant Pau del Camp, Santpe­dor, La Seu d’Urgell and in Olot. Sec­ond prize tick­ets were sold in Castell­bis­bal and Cubelles, among oth­ers.