Various sections of the Indian press reported a heartening story of how a penniless Senegalese immigrant got an astonishing Christmas present from the Spanish government. Ngame, a migrant who travelled on a boat from Morocco to Spain in 2007 and was rescued by Spanish officials, got the best surprise of his life when the Spanish government turned Santa Claus and announced that his lottery ticket was declared to contain the winning number with a prize of €400,000 (roughly Rs. 2.9 crores).

Spain is said to run one of the world’s biggest lotteries on Christmas having a prize pool of over €2.24 billion. Reuters recently reported that the Christmas lottery conducted by the Spanish government was a national passion, with most citizens staying “glued to TV screens for hours more as schoolchildren plucked lottery balls frogim a rotating drum, sinng out the resulting numbers in a chant that filled offices and homes.”

The Spanish lottery instead of declaring a single winner has 24 million winning entries (the population of Spain is 47 million). Thousands of winners were announced as getting a prize of €400,000 (based on the last 5 digits of the lottery ticket).

If media reports are to be believed, over 35 winners of the Spanish lottery were impoverished African immigrants who still cannot believe the unexpected bonanza that they have received. Further, since 30% of the lottery revenues go to the government exchequer by way of tax, the Spanish government also gets enriched by over a billion euros in the process, which is used to augment public spending and improve infrastructure facilities.