Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja, whose account of growing up in a remote part of Spain, with the companionship of only wolves and other animals, was analyzed in a case study and adapted into literature and film, died this month at 80, according to the authorities in San Cibrao das Viñas, the municipality where he spent his final years.
Mr. Rodríguez’s story came to light in the mid-1970s, about a decade after he had made what he described as an 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 with the site Anika Entre Libros.
But he came to believe to believe the tale, 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 called “I Played With Wolves,” originally published in 2009.
The story also inspired a 2010 film directed by Gerardo Oliveras, “Among Wolves,” in which Mr. Rodríguez appeared.
Mr. Rodríguez faced doubts over the years, but his story fascinated many. Mr. Janer became convinced after visiting places Mr. Rodríguez said he had been and meeting people — including a seminarian who had cared for him — who backed up the story and spoke of Mr. Rodríguez’s complete lack of social know-how.
In Rante, a village in San Cibrao das Viñas, in northwest Spain, where Mr. Rodríguez lived for the last quarter-century of his life, some people told Germany’s public broadcaster around the time the film was released that they had doubted his story until it was made into a movie — and some said they continued to be dubious. 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 eventually came to be known as the “wolf boy of Sierra Morena” and stuck to the story over the decades.
Claims of having grown up in the wild are widely viewed with skepticism, and expertise in the subject is rare. There have been some notable cases, though they are few. Feral children also appeared in ancient myths and medieval folk tales, fueling a real-life fascination with them.
In 1726, Caroline, the Princess of Wales, sought the 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.
Such tales have intrigued people because they say as much about society as they do 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,” the cultural historian Michael Newton wrote in his 2002 book, “Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children.”
As Mr. Rodríguez told it, he was born into a poor family in southern Spain in June 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. When he was about 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.
The old man then died or disappeared, and young Marcos 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’s 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.
In Rante, 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.”
In an interview with the newspaper El País in 2018, Mr. Rodríguez 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 said. “I smell like people.”
