Lucky For Some

Didn't he do El

A BRITISH expat was yesterday among the top winners of Spain’s £2.1BILLION El Gordo lottery.

Up to 1,950 people scooped £283,662 tax-free in the draw — which translates as The Fat One.

They included a horde of revellers at one bar who scooped a total of £92MILLION between them.

The complicated Christmas draw is designed to create as many winners as possible, and 32 million people entered.

Tickets cost 200 euros, or £189 — divided into tenths called decimos, at 20 euros, or £18.90.

Spaniards join work colleagues, families or even entire communities to buy tickets.

Hundreds of thousands queued in the cold to snap up a share, hoping to beat the economic gloom which has left Spain with the highest jobless rate in Europe.

The British winner, who has not been named, bought a ticket ending in a five because he was born in 1945.

He is living in the Torrevieja area on the South East coast where shop staff celebrated with other winning customers.

Three quarters of Spaniards played, spending an average £65 per household.

In the industrial town of Soria, near Madrid, that figure doubled — and paid off in style. Drinkers at Bar Gari downed free booze as they celebrated their £92million win.

Bar owner Ricardo Jimenez and his family won £1million while hundreds of his customers scooped around £50,000.

Fighting back tears, he said: “It’s unbelievable. This is a humble bar with fantastic working class customers.”

The televised draw takes THREE HOURS with numbers chosen from two drums.

One contains thousands of balls each with a ticket number. The smaller one has 1,787 balls with a cash amount.

With 70 per cent of takings going out in prize money, they have a one in six chance of winning something.

Up to 80million euros (£75.6million) goes to charities.

Source: The Sun