A man who told of growing up in a remote part of Spain, with only the companionship of wolves and other animals, died this month at the age of 80, according to the authorities in San Cibrao das Viñas, the municipality where he spent his final years.
The story of the man, Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja, came to light in the mid-1970s, about a decade after Mr. Rodríguez had made his unwilling return to human society. Gabriel Janer Manila, a writer, heard about the case from a friend and wanted to learn more.
“At first, it seemed like a fabrication. It couldn’t be true,” Mr. Janer said in a 2010 interview, describing his first meeting with Mr. Rodríguez.
But he would come to believe it, he said, finding corroboration for Mr. Rodríguez’s claims from witnesses and other research. Mr. Janer would go on to write a study about Mr. Rodríguez’s childhood and later a novel titled “I Played With Wolves,” originally published in 2009.
The story also inspired a 2010 film directed by Gerardo Oliveras, “Among Wolves,” which Mr. Rodríguez himself appeared in.
Feral children appeared in ancient myths and medieval folk tales, fueling a real-life fascination with them. There have been some notable cases, though they are rare.
In 1726, Caroline, the Princess of Wales, sought guardianship of a youth found in the woods in Germany who became known as Peter the Wild Boy and was a source of wonder in Europe. She installed him in her house in London under the watch of a doctor, then put him in the care of a servant when he proved unruly.
The so called Wild Boy of Aveyron was found in France at the end of the 18th century and was taken to a physician in Paris who tried and failed to teach him society’s ways.
Claims of having grown up in the wild are widely viewed with skepticism, and expertise in the subject is rare, but the tales have intrigued people because they say as much about society as about the children said to have lived outside of it.
“Through the stories, factual and fictional, of the feral children, there emerges, perhaps, another narrative: the fragmented and haunting story of our continuing relationship with the savage image of ourselves,” wrote cultural historian Michael Newton in his 2002 book, “Savage Girls And Wild Boys: A History Of Feral Children.”
Mr. Rodríguez faced doubts over the years, but his story fascinated people. Mr. Janer became convinced Mr. Rodríguez was telling the truth when he traveled to the places he said he had been and met people who backed up his story and spoke of his total lack of social know-how, including a seminarian who had cared for him, the writer said in a 2013 interview with the BBC.
In Rante, where Mr. Rodríguez lived later in life, some people told Germany’s public broadcaster around the release of the film that they had doubted his story until it was made into a movie — and some said they continued to doubt. In 2010, a team from Spain’s public broadcaster traveled with Mr. Rodríguez to the place where he said he had lived, filming him showing some of his survival skills, like catching fish using rocks, and his deep familiarity with nature, including mimicking bird calls.
In any case, he did eventually come to be known as the “wolf boy of Sierra Morena” and stuck to the story over decades, a consistency that Mr. Janer also cited in his 2013 interview.
As Mr. Rodríguez told it, he was born into a poor family in southern Spain in 1946. His mother died when he was very young, and the woman his father later married was an abusive stepmother. The family lived in a remote alpine hut in the Sierra Morena mountain range, turning firewood into charcoal. At about age 7, he said, he was put in the care of an old goatherd, to be trained to replace him.
“He takes Marcos in and teaches him how to survive, how to care for the flock of goats, how to do everything that might help him,” Mr. Janer said in the 2010 interview.
But, he said, the old man then died or disappeared, and the child began to fend for himself, unwilling or unable to return to his former home.
Mr. Rodríguez said he lived in the wild for about 11 years with the help of wolves and other animals. In 1965, he was discovered by law enforcement authorities among wolves, wearing animal skins.
He described his return to life among humans as something he did not know how to manage and would never fully embrace. According to Mr. Rodríguez in interviews and Mr. Janer’s study, his rehabilitation was undertaken by nuns. He said he had lost the habits of walking upright and of using human speech, and he had forgotten how to behave with people.
Mr. Rodríguez said he struggled with human society for much of his life. Employers had taken advantage of him over the years, people had mocked him, and he had been happiest among the animals, he said in interviews.
But in Rante, in northwest Spain where Mr. Rodríguez lived during his last quarter century, he worked with Amigas das Árbores, an environmental group, speaking to children at schools about his youth and his unique experience with animals.
The group, in a post on social media earlier this month, said that one of his final wishes had been “for his ashes to remain in the village that took him in.” It thanked “the residents of Rante, who welcomed Marcos as a member of the community and made him part of their families.”
In an interview with El País in 2018, Mr. Rodriguez said that despite his disappointment with humanity, he had no chance of returning to a life in the mountains. The area where he had once lived now featured cottages connected to the electric grid, and the wolves were strangers.
“If I call out to them they are going to respond, but they are not going to approach me,” he told El País. “I smell like people.”