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PHOTOGRAPHS: ANTONIO HEREDIA
Updated Thursday,21December2023-16:50
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If you think of the Christmas Lottery, you will probably think, in this order, of the bald man in the announcement, the cries of the Children of San Ildefonso, the zoological queues in front of Doña Manolita, the tiresome refrain of "very distributed" chanted by the media every December 22nd, and the realization at last that -surprise- another year that we don't even have to be reimbursed, but at least-we-have-health-what-is-what-matters (who has it).
But, to really explain what this collective delirium is that every year brings to Spain the largest lottery draw in the world, perhaps we should go back a century, specifically to 1922, and travel to Samoa, in Polynesia. Where the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski was amazed to see that some local tribes, at least once a year, gathered all their food and, even if they were dying of hunger, even after months of eating badly and with their children hungry, they happily threw all their food into the sea.
"Of course, when the Westerners got there and saw that," says sociologist Luis Ayuso, "they thought: 'But what is this?' It was a ritual of union and structuring of the group, a kind of liturgy to be united in the face of the elements. The same thing is, in the end, the Christmas Giveaway: an expensive choreography, but a very important choreography, which defines us as a group, and in which we sacrifice money to feel part of something."
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In other words, yes, this 2023 there are 2,950 million euros in prizes in 185 million tenths, and that in the news there are then presumed winners, but, as the dean of Economics at the University of Alcalá Luis Felipe Rivera recalls, "for us to have any certainty that we will win the Jackpot we would have to live 85,000 years, as many as numbers are usually sold, or more than 1,045 lives, if we consider that life expectancy at birth in Spain is 81.2 years."
But it doesn't matter: we throw the house out the window.
Two certainties, then, about the sacrosanct Extraordinary Christmas Draw that has come to illuminate us every winter solstice for 212 years. The first: it's practically impossible for us to get it – "like it starts raining on the 100,000 spectators at the Camp Nou and the first drop falls right on us," says mathematician David Orden. The second: that Spain will stop spending millions every year on it is even more unlikely.
Every year 30 million Spaniards play, imagine
José Antonio Gómez Yáñez, sociologist and professor at the Carlos III University
In 2022, €3,180 million of nothing. A little more than what the indigenous people of Samoa threw into the sea.
Conclusion: it is indestructible.
It will be irrational, it will contravene all the laws of logic and reasoning, but the Christmas Lottery, in Spain, is an unstoppable thing and its social effect, of belonging and community, is good, experts agree. And not even digital will put an end to it: it is one of the draws of the year with the lowest online sales, just 5%.
It's very fat, the Fat Man.
"It's that more than 30 million Spaniards play it every year, just imagine," says sociologist José Antonio Gómez Yáñez, who has been studying the phenomenon for years for the Carlos III University, and who has been telling us what the great event means since Ciriaco González, Ferdinand VII's Minister of the Indies, created it in 1811 to raise funds to finance the war against the French invader: "In fact, it is a ritual, a rite that must always be the same, mechanical, unalterable, because that's how rites are and because what is the backbone of Spanish society: the family, the groups of friends, the work environment."
There we have it: El Gordo as a social network (the real ones) of Spain, a country that if there is one thing that has made a flag, bulls and paella apart, it is to turn emotionally to the social.
Gómez Yáñez continues: "It's pure social glue. For the Spaniard, Christmas begins and ends with two luminous signs: El Gordo, on December 22, and El Niño, on January 6, but especially the former. There was hardly a drop in participation during the pandemic, logically in parallel to social interactions, but in reality we are talking about one of the most deeply-rooted Spanish customs, which not for nothing have Basque and Catalan nationalists tried to propose substitute draws, without success. In Catalonia, the draw for La Gorda [la Grossa in Catalan] is only played by the pro-independence supporters, they have not been able to do so. Shared rites ultimately define the character of a people, and that is what the Christmas Lottery is," he goes back to anthropological terrain.
Gómez Yáñez sits the average Spaniard on a huge couch and sees two fundamental reasons why people buy illusion, one active and the other, let's say, passive. The first: "It's a family network: parents buy for children and vice versa, co-workers shop together [75% of buyers share it and 70% don't play any other games of chance all year], and so on. I am sure that through these links of purchase of the Christmas Lottery we could draw relationships between practically 100% of Spanish society".
The second reason is less edifying and less confessable: we buy as "sure to protect us from envy." Lest it be the neighbor's turn, the brother's or, in the greatest danger, the brother-in-law. We buy, many of us, in self-defense. Up to 89% of Christmas Lottery buyers, according to the Institute of Politics and Governance of the Carlos III, for which Gómez Yáñez makes an annual report, itch due to "habit", "community pressure" or, attention, that "preventive envy" that is still a social tension: the dark side of the happy refrain of the flower power lottery that unites everyone.
That we get a prize, even if it's a refund, it's like if we're in the Rayo Vallecano stadium, it starts to rain and the first drop falls
David Orden, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Alcalá
"But above all, it's something constructive," Gómez Yáñez insists, "and I'll give you two pieces of information. According to the reports of the State Lottery and Betting Society of the State, most winners from rural areas invest what they earn in business fabric and wealth right there, breathing air into that empty Spain. And, on the other hand, for about eight or six years we have been studying how important this draw is as funding for the associative fabric, for small associations, which would have a hard time without this income." Buy me a lottery for the chess club or for the end-of-year trip.
But Paco arrives with the sales. In this case, David Orden, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Alcalá: "Let's see, in this draw the chances of winning are greater than in others, because there are many prizes, but even so, ahem, they are still very remote". He doesn't want to take away our illusion and subscribes to the minimum consolation: "It's true that getting a prize, even if we consider that the refund is even if you stay as you were, is not that difficult: it would be as if you were in the Rayo Vallecano stadium, which has 15,000 seats, as many as there are prizes today, and the first drop of rain falls on you".
We enter religious territory. The most delirious superstitions appear here - passing the tenths on the back of a black cat or the belly of a pregnant woman, entering the lottery administration with the right foot - or even artificial intelligences: you already know that ChatGPT, which is a bit smart, has predicted that 03695 is going to come out... And the height of loterology: could there be a way to predict the winning number?
Citizens queue in front of the administration of Doña Manolita, in Madrid, next to the Puerta del Sol.ANTONIO HEREDIA
"It's impossible," says David Orden, the mathematician whose last name is entirely real: "The draw has no memory and the patterns of balls and drum, if they have deviations, are imperceptible. There are those who say that some balls come out more than others because they weigh less if the numbers are graphically larger, and therefore more wood has been removed. It's impossible, it's not like that, this isn't the Casino of Torrelodones, where the Pelayos detected the fall of the roulette wheels. It's a well-made, impenetrable draw."
What if we bought en masse, like the classic Yankee bettors who get prizes by slaughtering the bookmakers? "Nothing, either. If I spend one euro on each of the 100,000 numbers I can have all the numbers, but with what I earn I don't get back the investment. A tenth of each number, at 20 euros per tenth, would be two million euros, and then you get 400,000. It's a well-designed draw, it leaves no loopholes."
Psychologists also bless this mathematical nonsense. For example, José Ortiz Gordo: "It's a fantasy: to be all equal in the face of something, to be truly the same. In the face of the hype, we are all the same, it is very democratic", as perhaps we are not even before the law, one might add. "Our daydream before the draw responds to the illusion of a fair world, the world we believe we deserve." The lottery as a social analgesic: the Royal House historically buys the number zero, and lets the plebs dream.
Ortiz Gordo, moreover, also emphasizes how evanescent it can be to get excited about the draw as, in the end, to win it: "There are many studies on how many of those who win millions in the course of a few years have melted them down, or have not been able to retain them, or channel them. This is a more delicate and darker part of all this. Just as sleep comes, it goes."
Perhaps because, in the end, the real winner of this theatre, as Ciriaco González sought, is Daddy State: the positive balance for the Administration is 1,242 million euros, according to Luis Felipe Rivera, the dean of the University of Alcalá.
It symbolizes the union of the poor and the next day, when we see that it has not touched us, is the day of health
Luis Ayuso, sociologist
While the rest of us dream, Leviathan is doing the math: in 2021 data, it earns 3,440 million euros, of which 2,408 million are allocated to prizes and 938 million to payments to lottery administrations, but then the Treasury retains 1,032 million (30% of total sales) and recovers, via taxes, 156.52 million. Bankers, with the oscillations imposed by chance, always win.
"It's another embodiment of Christmas, of the ideal of Christmas togetherness," says Luis Ayuso, a sociologist. "The TV spot kicks off, the song of the Children of San Ildefonso is the soundtrack and the lottery symbolizes the union of the poor, who enjoy the joy of others watching the winners uncork champagne. They're just like us, poor. It's a very powerful symbol. And then, that day, when we don't win, is the day of health: we are just as poor, but at least we are healthy and we are together."
The same effect, if perhaps inverse, that psychologists assign to horror films, which accommodates the spectator in his comfortable and safe daily life. In this case, through links and sharing.
But anyway, Professor Orden, the skeptical mathematician, buys Christmas lottery? "Well, no, really. Well, actually, sometimes I do: when I'm with people and others are buying..." Indestructible.
El Gordo
4.000.000 €
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2nd Prize
1.250.000 €
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3nd Prize
500.000 €
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4nd Prize
200.000 €
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5nd Prize
60.000 €
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