Betting in Spain

[Mentholdan]

I just thought some of you might be interested in what gambling is popular in Spain and seeing as I lived there for quite some time I can speak from experience. 

There are No betting shops in Spain but even the tiniest of towns has a lottery office. 

The Spanish are mad on their lotteries and there's at least one main lottery every day. The two big ones are the Primitiva, which takes place twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday, the other is The Bono Lotto which is drawn on four other days of the week. There is the National lottery once a month where you buy pre printed tickets with a five figure number printed on them, There is also the O. N. C. E. lottery which is sold 6 days a week also with pre printed 5 figure numbers and all profits go to charity for the blind. The O. N. C. E. ticket seller's are all blind and it's a way they can earn a living. The lottery offices also sell the Football Coupons, where you have 12 selections, most from the Spanish Premier and the rest from their 2nd division. You have 3 choices for each game, 1 2 X you normally have to predict at least 9 results to win a share of prize money. There is a 13th match on each coupon which is basically a tie breaker, eg. Prizes would go to the all 12 plus the tie break, or 11 and the tie break and so on. Most big wins come when the likes of Barca and Madrid get turned over. Also not to forget El Gordo, which translated means The Fat One, over the Christmas period, another 5 number pre printed ticket, the whole of the draw is televised over 6 or so hours. Because the numbers are sold in blocks, a large number of people in the same town normally have the winning number. These tickets are sold all year leading up to the draw and the Spanish people tend to buy tickets if they are visiting another part of the country to give themselves a better chance of winning. Most towns have slot arcades with 500 euro jackpot machines. The arcade in my town had a long automatic roulette table with an automated wheel, the table could seat about 10 - 12 people and sometimes you could win a nice few thousand, which I managed on a few occasions. 

[Stepandstop]

I remember going to Majorca once about 20 years ago and played a Spanish fruit machine with a then jackpot of 20,000 pesetas I won 5000 pesetas on a spin and didn’t no which was the collect button I ended up pressing one of the flashing buttons unaware I pressed the gamble button and lost 

moral of the story don’t play fruit machines after 10 pints 😂😂

[Mentholdan]

When I worked for a Spanish firm I joined the Football syndicate. They took turns in picking the coupon but would never let me choose because they said I didn't know anything about Spanish football. After moaning to them for months they finally relented and I picked the coupon. There was a lot of moaning and phrases like English prick, because I had both Madrid and Barcelona to get beat but I thought why do the obvious, big wins come when there are surprises. . What happened? I managed to get 11 right and netted 1 million pesetas, about 4K at the time, between the 5 of us. All the time I was In the syndicate after that I think we won about a tenner.