Spanish lottery games are responsible for the biggest ever jackpot prizes. El Gordo is known and is famous across the globe as offering a cash prize that no other lottery can match. However, other Spanish lotteries are very similar to the types of games you would expect to find in most other countries. Although they have several lotteries for players to choose from, most Spanish players tend to play the Primitiva or wait until that special time of the year when El Gordo comes around.
Most popular Spanish lotteries
The Primitiva is the default national lottery in Spain, although the Bonoloto offers more regular draws, and is based on the same 6/49 format as the Primitiva. El Niño is played on January 6 each year, whilst the EuroMillions takes in a vast number of Spanish players each week. Of course, Spain’s El Gordo is a world-famous lottery, and pretty much everyone who is anyone has a crack at that lotto each year.
Primitiva
The Primitiva is played on Thursdays and Sundays. The game requires players to land 6 numbers out of 49, with smaller cash prizes available for other winning combinations. Alongside Primitiva, players can opt to play the Bonoloto every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. It follows the same format as the Primitiva but offers smaller cash prizes.
El Gordo de Navidad
El Gordo de Navidad (The Christmas Fat One), is the biggest draw in the Spanish Christmas Lottery, or Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad, and Lotería de Navidad. The national lottery game is played every December 22, since 1892, and El Gordo is the main event. Tens of millions of pre-printed tickets costing €200 each can see players win jackpots which are often worth as much as €720 million. Those tickets can be broken down into €20 tickets, worth 10% of the total cash prize. Most Spanish players save throughout the year to buy a big ticket to this lotto game.
EuroMillions
Like many European countries, Spanish players wager on the EuroMillions, too. Players need to match five numbers, plus two Lucky Stars to win the jackpot, with tickets costing €2.50 a line.
The EuroMillions has seen a few big wins in the past. In 2009, a 25-year-old Spanish scooped €126.2m on the EuroMillions. In 2011, a massive €121m prize was paid out to a 30-year-old baker, Francisco Delgado Rodríguez from Seville. A man named Montserrat Mutgé pocketed €100m in 2012, and an anonymous ticket holder from Almuñecar won the same prize a year later. The most recent Spanish big winner was an anonymous ticket holder in Parla in Madrid, who won €137.3m in 2014.
Which lottery is the best?
The EuroMillions tend to make more multi-millionaires than the Primitiva, the Bonoloto, or El Gordo, but there can be no denying the real winner here. El Gordo de Navidad unites a nation, and everybody gets involved in this mammoth jackpot game. With the biggest prizes ever to be found in lottery games, El Gordo is easily one of the best lotteries in the world, never mind Spain.