In 1993, there was a huge buzz when the clairvoyant Rappel, famous for the robes he used to wear and very popular at the time, predicted that the Christmas Lottery jackpot would be won in Ibiza that year. He was wrong. However, two years later, when the windfall went to Mallorca, another fortune teller had predicted that the jackpot would go to a place with plenty of water. And we certainly don't lack that in the Balearic Islands. Yet another fortune teller did predict that Mallorca would be the lucky one, but he was wrong about the winning number. In 1989, according to the Diario de Ibiza newspaper, the jackpot traveled to the Pitiusas Islands thanks to six tickets that an Ibiza resident had bought at the legendary Doña Manolita lottery office on Madrid's central Calle del Carmen. The endless queues that form at its doors every year at this time are already a tradition of the capital, which the news programs of the state televisions explain to us punctually, as if Christmas lottery tickets were not sold anywhere else.
All the times we've won the jackpot
The first prize in the Christmas lottery was won thirty years ago in Mallorca, one of the few occasions when luck has favored the archipelago.
PalmWhat if it lands here...? This is the question that sparks the impulse to buy a lottery ticket every year around this time, as December 22nd, the date of the Christmas Lottery draw, approaches. Exactly thirty years ago, in 1995, the top prize was won in Coll d'en Rabassa, Palma. It was one of the rare occasions, barely a dozen, that the Christmas Lottery jackpot has favored the Canary Islands in over two centuries of history. Unlike Madrid, where it has landed 84 times, and Barcelona, 44 times.
As the famous joke about the Virgin Mary suggesting "buy a ticket" to the clenched fisted devotee asking her what he can do to win the lottery explains, perhaps this –relative– bad luck stems from the fact that this community, for reasons unknown, spends the least money on lotteries. In 2024, each islander spent 42 euros with this goal in mind. Almost half the national average: 73 euros.
The extraordinary Christmas lottery was established in 1812 with the same objective as the State throughout history: to raise revenue, as when the then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, established withholding tax on prizes in 2013, which until then had been tax-free. In those early 19th-century years, the need for money was desperate: we were in the midst of the Peninsular War, and the Cortes of Cádiz found the miraculous formula to increase revenue without raising taxes. Such is the veneration for the Christmas Lottery's top prize that the draw has not even been interrupted by the Spanish Civil War: in 1938, two draws were held, one in Burgos –Franco's capital– and the other in Barcelona, still a republic. From its very beginnings, luck took thirty years to smile on the islanders: it wasn't until 1843 that the first prize was won in Palma.
The doubt of whether they would get paid
In 1872, the Grossa lottery was won in Palma for the second time. It was number 16,374. Back then, that was a million and a half pesetas: an enormous sum. Miquel dels Sants Oliver describes the "whirlwind of people" that formed around the Cas Municipal grocery store on Palau Reial Street, which had sold "a few tickets widely distributed among the residents," as well as a silversmith's shop on Jaime II Street and several barbershops and meeting places. The biggest winner took home 75,000 pesetas. The question then became whether the lucky holders of the winning tickets would actually be able to collect these respectable amounts. At the time, the state of the public treasury was dire: the Carlist War, the colonial war, workers' revolts, and chronic political instability—and we complain now! Just in case, some of the lucky winners preferred to get advances from moneylenders, so a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. But their fears were unfounded: the prizes were collected just a month later, a reasonable timeframe for Mallorca.
In 1886, the members of the exclusive Círculo Mallorquín, then located where the Balearic Islands Parliament now stands, were the winners of the next Christmas Lottery jackpot to fall in Palma. It was number 6695, worth five million pesetas. It was quite a sight: the fourteen carts, loaded with sacks of five-peseta coins, made their way up the hillside of Calle del Conqueridor, where the society's headquarters were located, towards the Bank of Spain branch. Incidentally, that land had been purchased by the Casino Balear, the Círculo's predecessor, also thanks to lottery winnings.
From that windfall, the Circle received 250,000 pesetas for its coffers. And the first thing they did was, as the winners of the Grossa lottery often say, plug holes. Indeed, because they owed 12,000 pesetas. Even so, there were still improvements to be made, furniture to be bought, and 5,000 pesetas to be donated to charity. That winning number is still preserved today, framed, in the current headquarters of the Cercle, on Carrer de la Concepció in Palma. The theater company Ovnipresents has recreated that episode in a play. 06695 We've won the lottery, which has been staged this year in the Parliament, using the format of a theatrical tour.
In 1902, the Christmas Lottery's top prize, El Gordo, was won in Palma for the fourth time. The news arrived by telegram, and at first, the usual skeptics thought it was a bad joke. This time, the winning number was 28,038, and the lottery office on Carrer de la Unió was responsible for distributing the winnings: five million pesetas more. The people of Mallorca abandoned their proverbial impassivity: some took to the streets shouting, "We've won the big one!" Unlike in 1886, when the lucky winners were members of high society, this time the prize was divided in small shares among about two hundred people of modest means.
Luck smiles in Menorca
In 1935, luck smiled on Menorca. The number 25,888, known as 'the one with the three peanuts' because of the shape of the three figure eights, reminiscent of peanuts, was drawn in Ciutadella. The story goes... The Iris The manager of the Bank of Menorca took that number to the tobacconist Prats, on Roser Street, saying, "Here's the Grossa for you." "Yes, I know," replied Prats, unfazed. No major prize had ever been won in Ciutadella for over a century.
Everything changed completely when news broke that morning of December 22, 1935, that they had won the Grossa. By then, a new medium existed for broadcasting news: radio, although those early sets were still a luxury. It was so extraordinary that factories shut down, people poured into the streets, and speculation ran rampant among those playing the lucky number. Of course, Prats's tobacconist shop became the meeting place.
It was fifteen million pesetas, divided among eleven thousand citizens. The person who had bought a one-peseta share had won 7,500. The lights of the Bank of Menorca were on all night, the lucky number locked in the safe and guarded by a pair of Civil Guards. It was such a large sum that it wasn't until the following January 23rd that payments began to the lucky winners, who queued up to collect their cash prize.
Just nine years later, in 1944—with a civil war and the beginning of a world war in between—Menorca was once again a lucky island. This time, it adds The IrisIt was in Alaior where part of the winning number for the Grossa lottery, 33,037, had been sold, along with a fifth prize in the Christmas lottery. The Tramuntana wind was blowing and rain was threatening, but that didn't matter to the people of Alaior, because that financial help was welcome in hard times like those.
It wasn't until 93 years after that Grossa of 1902 that the first prize in the Christmas lottery fell again in Palma. It was in 1995, three decades ago. The winning number, 45,495, was sold entirely by lottery outlet number 17, located on Cardenal Rosselló Street, in Coll d'en Rabassa. Of course, the prize money had increased considerably over the intervening years: it was 35.1 billion pesetas.
The widespread joy that always erupts on these occasions was even more pronounced because the Grossa lottery prize was widely distributed among thousands of families, and moreover, families of modest means. As he emphasized Daily of MallorcaAt the time, El Coll was "a humble neighborhood, inhabited mostly by immigrants burdened by seasonal work." Well, that neighborhood put aside its problems and took to the streets to celebrate its good fortune. A neighboring jewelry store, operating as a lottery outlet, distributed shares worth 1.8 billion pesetas.
The celebration didn't end in El Coll. Other neighborhoods in Palma, including some of the more modest ones, received a share of that historic windfall, thanks to individuals and organizations that had bought tickets from lottery outlet number 17. Nearly a billion pesetas went to El Molinar, then an area with people "in a less than prosperous economic situation or even on the verge of hardship." Latest NewsAlthough it's hard to believe now, thirty years later.
Other groups that benefited included the workers of the then-Continente hypermarket, the Pomar pastry shop on Manacor Street, and a hotel in Can Pastilla, as well as residents of La Soledad and La Indioteria. Eight million pesetas fell into the hands of the Roma settlement of Son Banya. Sixty million went to the employees of the Almudaina Palace. The world of politics also got something: the then-leader of the opposition in the Calvià Town Hall, Eduard Vellibre, won 30 million. Not all the winnings stayed on the island: nine billion flew out of Mallorca, into the hands of tourists participating in Imserso, the senior citizens' holiday program, who had bought lottery tickets there.
In 1995, the Grossa lottery prize didn't stay within the city limits of Palma, but also reached María de la Salud, Cala Millor, Santa Margalida, and Muro. The rural areas have also been visited by fortune throughout their history: Santa Maria del Camí won the top prize in 1986, and Capdepera in 2003. The last time the Christmas Lottery's top prize fell in the Balearic Islands was in 2023.
Information compiled from texts by Luis Ripoll, Miguel de Santos Oliver, Julio Sanmartín, José María Marín Arce, Catalina Miralles, M. Martín and S. Soro and publications from the Islands Latest News, Daily of Mallorca, The Iris and Ibiza Daily.
