The Southern Spanish city of Grenada is home to several hundred new millionaires after residents from the city won the jackpot prize known as El Gordo, or the Fat One, in Spain's Christmas lottery. The lottery is one of the biggest and most popular in the world. This year the prize winnnings total more than 1.7 billion dollars. The winners of the top prize El Gordo shared out more than 260 million dollars between them. From Madrid Joanne Episcopo reports:

The streets of Grenada were awash with champagne corks today when hundreds of residents heard their number had won the jackpot El Gordo prize in Spain's hugely popular Christmas lottery. As numerous television crews descended on the city a group of young trainee hairdressers danced and sang in the street to celebrate their luck.

Their boss had bought into a winning ticket which he shared out amongst his staff and their Christmas bonus totalled more than a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The beaming boss said he was about to buy himself a new car with his new-found wealth.

Elsewhere under the drizzly rain Grenada's winners talked of taking holidays in the Caribbean while others just carried on drinking more champagne in stunned amazement. An estimated 96% of Spanish adults buy tickets in what is one of the world's largest lotteries, spending an average of 45 dollars each.

The complex system means there are thousands of winners as hundreds of people buy into the same ticket. It's essentially a good-natured affair as entire businesses, towns and -- in this year's case -- a couple of football associations share out the numerous prizes.