Catalan joy over town's lotto win

Cava flowed in Vic after the winning numbers were read out

Christmas cheer has come to Spain a few days early, with prize draws in the country's multi-billion euro lottery known as El Gordo, or the Fat One.

Sweepstake prizes worth more than 2bn euros (£1.4bn) were announced during a three-hour televised ceremony.

The cava was soon flowing in the Catalan town of Vic as around 1,700 ticket-holders took a share of the top prize of 510m euros.

The complex system allows many people to buy stakes in a number.

This year's big winner was 20,085.

Most years the winnings go to entire families or communities rather than an individual jackpot winner.

In keeping with a 200-year-old tradition, children from a school that was once an orphanage sing out the five-digit winning numbers and the value of the prizes.

Lucky town

The lottery office in Vic that sold the winning number said it had regularly offered that number among its tickets in previous years but had never struck lucky until now.

We are very, very, very, very happy Ignaci Puig Vic's deputy mayor

"We have been waiting for this for years," Miquel Codina, son of the lottery office manager, told the news agency Efe.

Vic's deputy mayor Ignaci Puig told Spanish state radio that many of the town's 36,000 inhabitants would benefit.

"We are very, very, very, very happy. The number has been well shared out. We know at least two restaurants have sold it as well as several cultural, sporting and social organisations," he said.

In 2004, the winning series was sold in a small village in the Pyrenees named Sort, the Catalan for luck.