Record sales expected in Malaga for Spain's famous Christmas lottery draw on Thursday

Soaring inflation and high energy bills do not seem to be deterring people from buying tickets for the Christmas Lottery which takes place this Thursday, 22 December. Although the final figure will not be known until later, the authorities are sure that ticket sales will be well above last year’s record, when 90,558,120 euros worth were sold in Malaga province alone.

Last year, more tickets for this lottery were sold in Malaga than in any other province in Andalucía, and it was seventh in the country after Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Vizcaya and Asturias.

The approximately 300 vendors in the province for this year’s Christmas Lottery have been assigned 488,774 tickets and some have been on sale for several months.

As usual, numbers ending in 5 or 7 are the most popular in Malaga province, and these tickets are normally the first to sell out. A ticket ending in the number 5 has won El Gordo, as the top prize is known, on 32 occasions although 2021 was an exception: the winning number last year was 86148.

Last year tickets sold in Malaga province won 10.56 million euros in El Gordo, of which 10.3 million were in San Pedro Alcántara, where one lottery office sold the number which won the fifth prize.