Tickets for Spain’s Christmas Lottery with the famous ‘El Gordo’ jackpot prize go on sale

The Christmas Lottery has arrived early on the Costa del Sol. The first ‘decimo’ (tenth) tickets for Spain’s most anticipated raffle of the year have already been put up for grabs at the main state lottery sales points in the province. Although there are still more than five months to go until December 22, tickets are already available to Malaga province residents and holidaying tourists in the area alike.

For several weeks, lottery administrators have speculated that the first tickets would arrive between July 3 and 10, although the first tickets have already been received this Monday and some have even been placed on sale in the windows as a reminder. At the moment you can only buy physical tickets, since the ones issued by a terminal will not come into operation until the end of the week.

Actually, there is no specific date for the start of the sale, since not all lottery administrations receive the series at the same time, but they are distributed gradually. However, the official starting gun will not be fired until the Loterías y Apuestas del Estado unveils the campaign.

In the last Christmas raffle, some 97,754,800 euros were won from some 488,774 tickets bought in Malaga. The tickets ending with a 5 and 7 are the most demanded by people in the province and are usually the first to run out. Five is the number that has graced the ending of the El Gordo (fat one) jackpot prize the most times: with 32. It is followed by 4 and 6 with 27 appearances each, and 8, on 24 occasions.