J. Casares / EPA
Residents of La Bañeza celebrate the award at the El Gordo lottery
Two Spanish cities recently shaken by tragedies, with fires and a mine accident, were kissed by luck in the famous Spanish lottery El Gordo.
After a year marked by disasters and losses from fires, two communities in northern Spain end 2025 with an unexpected wave of hope. Residents of La Bañeza and Villablino, cities in the Castile and Leon region, will share hundreds of millions of euros after buying tickets for the famous Spanish Christmas lottery, El Gordo.
La Bañeza, a town with around 10,000 inhabitants, was severely affected by one of the worst forest fires in Spanish history last August. The fire destroyed around 55,000 hectares of forest, caused three deaths and forced around 8,000 people to abandon their homes. Although the rain helped to extinguish the flames, it came too late to prevent widespread devastation, says the .
Now, just a few months later, the city has been struck by extraordinary good fortune. A total of 117 series of the winning lottery number were sold in La Bañeza, representing a prize of approximately 468 million euros to be divided among local ticket holders. Every tenth winner — one tenth of a lottery ticket costing €20 — is worth €400,000.
“This generated an avalanche of emotions after such a terrible year,” said the mayor of La Bañeza, Javier Carrera, after the results were announced. “Winning the lottery, in addition to the joy and emotion, is something that fell from the sky in a place that needs it so much.”
Good luck also reached Villablino, another town in the same region. At the beginning of this year, the community was shaken by an accident in a minein March, which killed five men from the region. Residents also purchased the winning number and are now in the running for a multi-million pound share of the top prize.
El Gordo, which means “the fat one”, is one of the biggest and most famous lotteries in the world. It has 100,000 numbers, each repeated in 198 series, which results in almost two million identical tickets available throughout the country. The draw takes place during a day-long televised event in December, in which children from the San Ildefonso school in Madrid sing the winning numbers and prize values, a centuries-old tradition.
In addition to its magnitude, El Gordo is surrounded by superstitions. An old belief is that buying a ticket at a place that has recently experienced a tragedy increases the chances of winningbased on the idea that bad luck is often followed by good luck.
