MADRID (AP) — Champagne corks popped around Spain on Sunday as jubilant winners celebrated scooping up prizes in the country's famed Christmas lottery, the world's richest. 
 
 School children sing out the numbers for the top prize of Spain's Christmas lottery known as 'El Gordo' or 'The Fat One', as they hold lottery balls, in Madrid, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2013. Millions of Spaniards... (Associated Press) 
 
 Gas station worker, Maria Gonzalez Jimenez, hugs a colleague after winning the second prize of the Christmas lottery “El Gordo” (“The Fat One”) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Press photographers take photos as the owners of a lottery office celebrate after selling the first Christmas lottery prize “El Gordo” (“The Fat One”) in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday Dec. 22, 2013. Millions... (Associated Press) 
 
 Gas station workers celebrate after winning the second prize of the Christmas lottery “El Gordo” (“The Fat One”) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain, Sunday Dec. 22, 2013. Millions... (Associated Press) 
 
 Gas station workers and clients celebrate after winning the second prize of the Christmas lottery “El Gordo” (“The Fat One”) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain, Sunday Dec. 22, 2013.... (Associated Press) 
 
 One ticket-holder who slept in Sunday morning said he'd leapt up from his bed in surprise after hearing the television announce his ticket number for "El Gordo" (The Fat One) — the lottery's top prize, a cool 400,000-euro ($546,200) payoff. 
 
 Raul Clavero, 27, a mechanic living in the Madrid suburb of Leganes, then realized that four other members of his family had also bought tickets with the same winning numbers. 
 
 Millions of Spaniards had been glued to their televisions as 2.5 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in prize money was distributed in a four-hour TV show. Unlike lotteries that offer one large jackpot, Spain's yuletide drawing sprinkles a variety of winnings on thousands of ticketholders. 
 
 Tales of joy and celebration were widely broadcast on TV stations, providing Spain's struggling population a rare moment of joy after another year of a brutal financial crisis. 
 
 Before Spain's property-led economic boom imploded in 2008, ticket buyers often talked about spending their winnings on new cars, beach homes or fancy vacations. Now many Spaniards are just hoping to avoid having their homes or cars repossessed. 
 
 "We jumped out of bed and ran out," Clavero said, still looking shell-shocked two hours later. He added that he would "pay the mortgage, that's the first thing, and then just enjoy the rest." 
 
 Winning El Gordo tickets this year were sold in at least eight locations throughout the country, including Madrid, Barcelona and the northern industrial city of Modragon, where electrical appliance manufacturer Fagor Electrodomesticos filed for bankruptcy in October. 
 
 The second-best number netted winners €125,000 ($170,700) and all these tickets — worth 1.3 million euros ($1.7 million) — were sold in the town of Granadilla de Abona on the Canary Island resort of Tenerife. 
 
 The lottery had one change this year. For the first time, the tax man will claim 20 percent of winnings above 2,500 euros ($3,400), as the Spanish government strives to right an economy saddled with sky-high unemployment of 26 percent. 

 1 of 3. Pensioners, who won part of the first prize of Spain's Christmas Lottery 'El Gordo' (The Fat One), celebrate outside a lottery shop where the lottery number was sold in Leganes, near Madrid, December 22, 2013. 
 
 MADRID (Reuters) - Lottery ticket-holders in two Spanish towns - a working-class suburb outside Madrid and a town recently hit by layoffs in the Basque country - were the big winners of the 640-million-euro El Gordo Christmas draw on Sunday. 
 
 People who bought their tickets in the two towns took a combined 540 million euros of El Gordo, the top prize of a 200-year-old Christmas lottery that is a treasured tradition in Spain, with families, offices and bar regulars clubbing together to buy tickets. 
 
 Some 180 million euros ($246 million) went to the Basque town of Mondragon, the site of Spain's biggest consumer appliance company Fagor, which recently had to lay off more than 2,000 people as part of insolvency proceedings. 
 
 "I'm on cloud nine! I couldn't imagine something like this happening. We've been in the press for so many unpleasant reasons, and for something which brings such joy to happen here is a real support for the people," Jose Maria Garai, one of the officially designated ticket sellers in Mondragon, told Spanish television. 
 
 Another 360 million euros went to ticket holders in Leganes, a town of laborers and immigrants on the outskirts of the capital. 
 
 The Christmas lottery was designed in 1812 to allow as many people as possible to get a festive windfall. This year 160 "series", or versions, of the winning number were issued at 200 euros each, capable of being divided into 10ths of 20 euros each. 
 
 El Gordo, Spanish for "The Fat One", is the richest prize but there are thousands more, and the drawing takes hours. More than 2.2 billion euros were doled out on Sunday. 
 
 This year for the first time the state will tax any winnings over 2,500 euros as part of austerity measures aimed at reducing one of the euro zone's highest public deficits. 
 
 The zone's fourth largest economy has been in and out of recession since a property bubble burst in 2008, leaving almost 6 million unemployed, gutting domestic demand and forcing the government to request billions of euros in European aid to bail out its banks. 
 
 Lottery spending fell more than 4 percent this year as Spaniards continue to feel the pinch of the five-year economic slump. 
 
 ($1 = 0.7315 euros) 
 
 (Reporting by Raquel Castillo; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
– Spain, which has had not a lot to celebrate in the financial realm in recent memory, is basking in the glow of its annual exercise in literally throwing scads of cash to the wind: Yesterday's "El Gordo" lottery saw some $3.4 billion awarded to thousands of winners in a four-hour televised marathon that spreads holiday cheer and cold, hard cash to the masses. As Reuters reports, residents of working-class towns Mondragon and Leganes appeared to be the big winners, taking in some $738 million of the total haul. "I'm on cloud nine!" says one ticket seller in the Basque town of Mondragon. "We've been in the press for so many unpleasant reasons"—among them, the recent layoff of 2,000 workers at the country's biggest appliance company, which is headquartered there—"and for something which brings such joy to happen here is a real support for the people." Residents of Madrid suburb Leganes will also likely see an economic uptick after residents there won about $490 million. But there is one nod to austerity this year, notes the AP: In a first, the government will collect a 20% tax on winnings greater than $3,400.