Winning Big

Residents of the small Spanish town of Almazan are dancing in the streets after winning big money in a lottery. The lottery, known as El Gordo, or The Fat One, has been around for 200 years. Tickets cost €200 and are often bought by a group of people.

Locals in Almazan, population 6,000, sang, danced and swigged champagne on the cobbled streets of their town in north-central Spain after some became millionaires in Spain's Christmas draw.

Up to 1,800 tickets carry the winning number 20297, and the majority of them were sold from Almazan's lottery office, most others being purchased in towns in the provinces of Seville, Valencia and Alicante.

"It's 10 million for the whole family, we don't believe it yet!" shouted a young mother in Almazan on national television, cradling a baby in one arm and a champagne bottle in the other.

El Gordo is hugely popular among Spaniards, who are among Europe's biggest gamblers, and shops, offices and cafes ground to a halt for the draw which this year dished out 2.14 billion euros in winnings.

I guess Spain has some, shall we say interesting, customs. Not just a 200 year old lottery where the winning numbers are sung out by a choir, either. They are also big on pastries shaped like feces.

Yet statuettes of "El Caganer," or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain's northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.

During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.

Maybe if we combine the two? It could be amusing.