Spain's 2024 Christmas Lottery ad, set in Vigo, tackles loneliness

The annual advert for Spain's Christmas Lottery, known as El Gordo and run by the state-owned Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, was released on 1 November 2024. Its theme was "Compartir es extraordinario" ("Sharing is extraordinary"), a message that fits a draw in which families, friends and colleagues routinely split tickets.

The film was set in Vigo, a port city in Galicia, in north-western Spain. Rather than focusing on the prize money, it dealt with loneliness and with "emptied Spain", the term commonly used for rural and inland areas that have lost population over decades. The story used a small, everyday setting to suggest that company and community matter more than winning.

The Christmas advert has become a major cultural event in Spain, widely discussed and shared online each autumn, as it marks the unofficial start of the festive season before the draw on 22 December. The 2024 spot continued the tradition of emotional, socially minded storytelling over direct promotion, a style that later campaigns, including the 2026 one, have been compared against.