This Tuesday there will be no public in the stalls of the Royal Theater as every December 22. People have not queued at dawn to be among the 416 people – many of them in disguise – who each year saw the Christmas Draw live .
The coronavirus pandemic has caused that for the first time in its more than two centuries of history, this event will take place only with the presence of the children of San Ildefonso, the workers of Loterías y Apuestas del Estado and journalists.
But although the seats are not going to be filled, after such hard months, this draw for the Gordo comes loaded with a collective illusion even greater than that of previous editions. These are your keys.
Security measures . You will not be able to see regulars such as the octogenarian Manoli Sevilla, Bishop Juan, the television Mocito Feliz or Fernando Vázquez, who sang El Gordo in 1954 and since then a raffle has not been lost, and the media capacity is reduced 50%.
Those who are allowed to enter the theater must wear the mask permanentlyand only the children who sing the balls will be without it at the time of their intervention. So that they can maintain the distance of two meters, the space between drums has been increased.
The presidential table will have four members, instead of five, and the professionals will be separated by a screen. Everyone who remains on stage must have passed an antigen test.
Numbers.The most demanded . It is common for the most requested numbers to coincide with dates related to some important event that occurred in the year.
This being the case, it is not surprising that on this occasion the most sought after was the one linked to the day on which the state of alarm was declared . There are 1,720 tenths with the 14320, which was sold out fifteen days after being put on sale.
Other numbers that have also been sold out have been 25110, the day Maradona died , or 11020, in reference to Rafa Nadal’s thirteenth Roland Garros .
Awards.A person buys a ticket for the Extraordinary Draw of the Christmas Lottery 2020
For this extraordinary draw, 172 series have been issued, two more than in the previous three years. Each of them is made up of 100,000 bills and each bill is made up of 10 tenths. At 20 euros per tenth, the issue reaches 3,440 million euros.
70% of them are distributed, which leaves the figure at 2,408 million, 28 more than in 2019. The total of prizes has increased by more than 300,000, to 26.3 million.
Downward estimate . Lotteries calculates that each citizen has invested 65.66 euros in tenths for this day, an estimate lower than the 68.48 euros he calculated a year ago. However, the real figure was then 62.19 euros.
The operator expects that 15.5 million numbers will have been sold, one million more, but we will have to wait for returns to know the final figure.
