Everything seemed to indicate that, as has been the trend since online sales became widespread, the jackpot of the 2024 Christmas lottery draw would be widely distributed. However, at 11:27 AM (sixth wire of the fifth chart), the first prize (72480) of the most popular lottery game in Spain hit squarely at administration number 6 in Logroño (Lotería María del Carmen). Many of the winning tickets had traveled in multiple slips from San Blas to the neighborhood in Madrid, bringing joy to the large family of the Club Deportivo Distrito Olímpico. This time, for the Christmas jackpot, they toasted with La Rioja wine instead of cava, although the draw left some significant prizes in Catalan territory, as well as in Valencia, where, following the tragedy of the floods, special attention was paid to the movements of lady luck on this occasion.
The prize, endowed with 4 million euros per series, made its first stop in Logroño. La Rioja is one of the autonomous communities with the highest per capita participation in this lottery. There, 105 out of the 193 series of number 72480 were sold (the rest were returned), distributing 420 million euros that mostly moved to the capital of Spain. The real money shower of this lottery – clichés aside, in a ritual full of commonplaces that are part of its charm – this time flooded a humble neighborhood in Madrid.
“Do you know what that means? It means that those of us who get up every day at six in the morning to go to factories or provide services in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid now have something extra to face debts, pay off overdue rent or mortgage payments, go on those dream vacations, or tackle the future with peace of mind.”
This reflection summarizes the feelings of the mothers and fathers of players from the Distrito Olímpico Basketball Club in San Blas. For 42 seasons, this club has been shaping athletes and individuals proud to belong to a neighborhood that knows what it means to fight, not for a medal or a cup, but to survive. According to the Madrid District Indicators Panel, the per capita income of San Blas-Canillejas (€35,546 in 2022) places it among the ten neighborhoods with the fewest resources in the city.
The largest portion of the first prize was distributed in small shares among the sports organization
It is not clear how all those lottery tickets ended up in Distrito Olímpico (more than half of the jackpot). Yesterday, it was all speculation. What is clear is that they were distributed in the form of shares: 2 euros for two numbers and 1 for the club. Or something like that, because amidst so much joy, it is not easy to understand each other. But, to give you an idea, whoever holds those 2 euros of the jackpot will pocket 40,000 euros.
“A pasta! I can't believe it, I can't believe it,” was the most repeated phrase yesterday in that San Blas of people from La Mancha, Extremadura, and Andalusia who settled near the Barcelona road in the late 70s and 80s, outside the M-30, and who in the late 90s and with the arrival of the 21st century became filled with immigrants, especially from Latin America. The club's management has admitted they can hardly explain why they purchase their lottery tickets in Logroño. “Someone in the club said they were very kind and they could pay for our ticket books,” explained the vice president, Ángel Francisco Iglesias, who celebrated in the best way the five years they have been collaborating with the lottery vendors in La Rioja. “And also, depending on the number of shares we sell, lottery numbers, they make a small donation to us,” he added.
Online sales cause a huge dispersion in the distribution of most awards
The prizes are widely distributed, the Christmas lottery on December 22nd is more true than ever this time. Each of the approximately 700 players of this club had 30 tickets that they sold to their families, and many parents exchanged them at work, a system that has benefited many people.
This entity is the result of the merger between two historic clubs in the neighborhood that could not live separately. It takes its current name, the Olympic District Sports Club, in April 2004, after the fusion of the Gran San Blas Basketball Sports Club and the Atenea Basketball Club. The outcome: a humble club with top-notch sports facilities, some of which are municipal, with its sports hall named after the former Spanish national team coach, Pepu Hernández.
The lottery vendors in Logroño toast to the number that won the first prize
Meanwhile, the main lottery prize once again passed over Catalonia, barely awarding 31.2 million euros in the main prizes, a poor consolation that doesn't make up for most of the money spent on this draw. The luckiest Catalan municipality was La Pobla de Segur, thanks to the third prize (number 11840). The Can Mariano restaurant in Baro, featured in the TV series Tor by Carles Porta, distributed 15 series (7.5 million euros). The La Ganxa lottery administration in La Pobla de Segur had brought 20 series of the randomly chosen number to be sold by the lottery seller Teresa Agulló, who returned five the previous week. Esther Picolo, the daughter of the restaurant owners, explained that the family plays some shares of the winning number, but did not specify how many.
Awards for a restaurant in Pobla de Segur, a spa in La Garriga, and a lottery in Sant Boi
The third prize also reached La Garriga (it touched the workers of the Blancafort spa hotel), Mollerussa, and Cornellà de Llobregat, and to a lesser extent Lleida, Barcelona, Girona, Berga, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Mataró, Sant Just Desvern, Vilanova i la Geltrú, Figueres, La Seu d'Urgell, and Cambrils. On the other hand, the second prize (40014) left 8.6 million, mainly in Sant Boi de Llobregat, a municipality triply lucky in this draw, as it also won a small part of the third prize and one of the fourth prizes.
Administration number 5 of Sant Boi celebrates the second prize
The second prize was also sold in Barcelona (it was not exactly a very fortunate day for the Catalan capital) and a tenth in La Roca del Vallès. The fourth and fifth prizes also made an appearance in various Catalan municipalities, although very discreetly (in most places, there were not those manifestations of joy, sincere or feigned, that are repeated almost every December 22). In the city of Barcelona, administration number 264 on Passeig Fabra i Puig, along with the one at Las Arenas, were the only ones with more than one of the five main prizes, two fifths in the Turó de la Peira location and the third, a fourth and a fifth in the shopping center at España square, which continued the winning streak started with the 2023 jackpot.
