Three-quarters of the Spanish population were glued to their television screens on Saturday as the winning numbers in the world's richest lottery were revealed, paying out €1.4 billion in prize-money.
The annual event, known as ``El Gordo'', or The Fat One, broke all previous records with three out of four Spaniards buying 100 million tickets and spending a grand total of nearly €1.9 billion.
The top prize was €1.8 million or 300 million pesetas, which went to the winning number of 18,795. Under a complicated system of sharing out the spoils, there are a total of 1,540 winning five-digit numbers covering a myriad of smaller payouts.
Each number is sung out loud by a group of children from the San Ildefonso primary school in Madrid, formerly an orphanage.
The marathon draw takes three hours and is played out live on national television. The payouts are complicated still further because tickets with the same number can be bought many times over in different series all over the country.
Furthermore each ticket costs €180 with most people buying a tenth or ``decimo'' and often dividing them still further into smaller shares to spread around friends and relatives.
There are more than 17,700 winning tickets with a one in six chance of getting a prize.
The Spanish lottery was begun by King Carlos III in 1763 and this year marked the 189th ``El Gordo'' as well as the last to be organised in pesetas, before the introduction of the euro on January 1.
AFP