Have you won the lottery? 'Lucky' date of birth takes jackpot

A LOTTERY shop manager in Madrid is grateful that her son Luis, 32, had her rushing to a maternity ward when he did: If he had not been born on April 5, 1990, she would not have sold the jackpot-winning El Gordo ticket this year.

Whilst some ticket-buyers prefer to pick out random number combinations they will never remember from one year – or week – to the next, to avoid the harrowing disappointment of their regular figures coming up that one time they forget to play – others stick rigidly to numbers that mean something to them.

And this was the case with Soledad Muñoz, who made sure to be selling the festive lottery ticket numbered 05490.

Given that it was drawn as the first-prize number today (Thursday, December 22), Soledad's friends, family members and regular customers are now celebrating after claiming a minimum of €400,000 a head – and Soledad herself, like lottery shop sellers in general, gets a commission reflecting this, together with the enhanced reputation a jackpot-winning branch gets among the superstitious.

Soledad used to be a ticket-seller on the Madrid metro, but always wanted to own a lottery shop; when her mother passed away and she inherited her apartment, the sale of the property funded the purchase of branch 522 in the capital.

Luis López says that this, along with the top prize going to tickets with her grandson's date of birth, means his Grandma was 'smiling down on them' this year.

El Gordo tickets cost €200 each, meaning the average member of the public buys a much more affordable tenth of a ticket, or décimo, at €20.

The majority of full tickets tend to be sold to syndicates made up of work colleagues, friend groups or families, although anyone who did spend €200 on a ticket for themselves bearing the number 05490 is now €4 million wealthier than they were on Wednesday, December 21.

They will, of course, have to pay 20% tax on all bar the first €10,000.

A décimo featuring the combination 05490 will earn its holder €400,000.

Winning sums have not changed in decades, but the lower prizes – lower than the numerous daily lotteries played across Spain – mean higher odds of a win that might be anything from a helpful cashflow bonus through to enough to buy a spacious new home.

Overall, the odds remain very low of a top-three prize win, but smaller wins can still be welcome at an expensive time of year such as Christmas, and are far more likely.

Second-prize full tickets are worth €1.25m to the holder, or for a décimo, €125,000 – this year, if your coupon carries the combination 04074, that's you.

Third-prize El Gordo tickets net €500,000, or for a décimo, €50,000 – this year's goes to those with the number combination of 45250.

Fourth prize, worth €200,000 for a full ticket or €20,000 for a décimo, goes to the combinations 54289 and 25296.

Curiously, the latter is one of only three drawn this year that could feasibly be someone's date of birth – February 25, 1996.

This is also true of one of the fifth-prize combinations, 24492, meaning anyone born on April 24, 1992 whose birthday inspired someone's number choice has just earned them €60,000 for a full ticket, or €6,000 for a décimo.

Other fifth-place tickets – of which eight are drawn every year – are 62391, 43696, 88509, 38454, 79138, 36142, and 87092.

Numbers not included in those mentioned above may still have attracted a small win if two, three or more digits in the combination came up – these are sometimes just a refund of the original price, being €20 for a décimo or €200 a ticket, or are at times up to several hundred for a décimo or several thousand for a full ticket.