SPAIN: Sort has lived up to its name. Sort - "suerte" in Spanish - is the Catalan word for "lucky", and this small Pyrennean village of only 1,000 inhabitants must be one of the luckiest on earth.
Only three minutes after the children of the St Ildefonso school began their traditional chant of lucky numbers, they drew out the small wooden ball bearing the number 54,600 bringing prizes of almost €400 million to the Golden Witch lottery office in Sort.
Not all the money will remain in the town. Its fame has spread around the world, and everyone wants to buy a ticket from the lucky village.
Almost three-quarters of the tickets went to outsiders, and this year for the first time Sort went on the internet. Hopeful punters from the US, Japan, Germany, France or Italy as well as many other parts of Spain, purchased their tickets on line, spreading the millions across the globe and bringing an extra happy Christmas to thousands.
Tens of thousands of others have won smaller prizes ranging from €960,000 for the second prize to just €1,000, and those whose ticket ends in a zero will get their money back to invest in the next draw.
As befits a country where a national lottery dates back to 1800, Spaniards are inveterate lottery players who invest huge sums every week of the year.
But the El Gordo (Fat One) Christmas Lottery is special, and the annual draw on December 22nd marks the start of the long Christmas holidays which last until the Three Kings bring Spanish children their gifts on January 6th.
The popularity of the lottery grows every year, and nearly everyone has a small interest in it. This year, 195 series of 66,000 tickets were issued, each costing €200, each one divided into 10 "decimos". Many of these are then subdivided into smaller shares to give or sell to friends, colleagues and customers in shops and bars.
One friend of this writer bought three €200 tickets for number 54,600 over the Internet from the Golden Witch in Sort. He sold shares through the local sports club near his home in the centre of Mallorca.
Pepe, his brother and a cousin each bought shares in the winning ticket, and will now have an extra €200,000 with which to enjoy their Christmas.
There was some concern for the health of Mr Angel Mendoza, in the intensive care unit of a Burgos hospital after suffering a heart attack.
He had shared four decimos in the winning number with his three sons. The shock of winning €2 million caused him no apparent harm as he proudly showed off the photocopies of his tickets, and doctors say he is making a good recovery.
Lottery players are a superstitious race, who remain loyal to certain numbers, choosing their birthdays, weddings or other dates significant to them. Some of them rejected this year's winning number because they believe that a ticket ending in two zeros is unlucky, and others hate low numbers.
In a somewhat macabre gesture, the number 11,304, the date of the March 11th train massacre, was in great demand, and the lottery office in Atocha station where two of the bombs exploded sold out its supply of tickets weeks ago. They didn't win, but €36 million went to the employees of a printers near Calle Tellez, the scene of one of the other bombs. They always buy their tickets from lucky Sort.