Money certainly grows on trees in isolated Spanish region of Monegros, which lands 700million El Gordo windfall

SINCE 1822 Sevilla has been a good place to play the lottery.

Indeed, since then the Andalucian city has seen the El Gordo jackpot numbers fall on it a total of 15 times.

And this year was no exception, when a total of 81million euros were scattered on the Andalucian capital.

This makes Sevilla the third luckiest place to live in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona.

And this year in Andalucia only Malaga was handed more money in the world’s biggest lottery draw, which handed out a staggering two billion euros in total.

It is also in stark contrast with Huelva, which is the only Andalucian city that has never won.

This year Granada, Jaen and Cordoba also got winning tickets.

The biggest winner in Spain this year however, was a tiny Huescan village called Granen, which left many of its 2000 residents with 400,000 euros each.

A total of 700m euros fell on the village, which is a predominantly farming community, sitting in one of Spain’s harshest, driest areas, known as the ‘Monegros’ region.

The area, which is almost semi-desert, has nearly a quarter of its workforce unemployed and many businesses have closed this year.

A total of 2.7 billion euros were spent on tickets, with the average Spaniard punting 57 euros.

While slightly down on last year, the only real winner – once again – is the Spanish state which takes some 30 per cent of the money.
This amounts to around one per cent of the country’s budget deficit target.

A total of 100,000 numbers are divided up into fractions, with punters putting down anything from a euro to €200 on each number.