In a story with a plot twist that could come from O. Henry, Spain’s ‘El Gordo’ Christmas lottery has showered €56 million Euros on hundreds of residents in Pinos Puente, a small town where a third of the population is out of work.
In a further twist, the winning tickets were sold by the local branch of Spain’s Communist Party. Organizations frequently buy blocks of tickets and then sell them for a small extra fee as a fund-raiser.
256 of the tickets sold by the party had the second place number, which comes with a payout of €125,000 for each ticket. Others won smaller amounts. The top prize is €400,000, but all of those winners live elsewhere.
The El Gordo lottery, which dates to 1812 and is a big Christmas tradition in Spain, is unusual among big lotteries. One of the world’s largest, with a €2.3 billion payout, it aims to distribute hundreds of big prizes, rather than just a few huge ones.
