Man raised by wolves for 12 years wants to return to live in the wild

Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja, 72, outside his home - Photo: El Páis

Reply to the newspaperEl PaisOn March 29, 72-year-old Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja said he was never able to integrate with humans after being cut off from his wolf pack when he was 19. Although he tried to return to the mountains, Pantoja said his connection with the wolves was lost and he was stuck between two worlds.

Born in the southern Spanish province of Córdoba in 1946, Pantoja’s mother died when he was three years old. Pantoja’s childhood was one of abuse at the hands of his biological father and stepmother before they sold him to a shepherd living near the Sierra Morena mountains. When Pantoja was seven, the shepherd who took him in disappeared, whether dead or gone, and Pantoja lived alone from then on.

It may be bad luck for many people, but for Pantoja it was luck that a pack of wolves took him in. The female wolf considered Pantoja as her own son and treated him like a mother.

The wolves taught Pantoja how to survive on berries and mushrooms and showed him how to cross the mountains. He slept in caves with bats, snakes and deer at night and played with the wolf cubs during the day.

A female wolf in a nature reserve in England. Photo: Matt Cardy

Pantoja told the newspaperEl Paisthat those were the happiest, most carefree days of his life. "The only time I had to wrap my feet was when they hurt because of the snow. I had such big calluses on my feet that kicking a rock was like kicking a ball."

At the age of 19, a team of Spanish police discovered Pantoja. Having not spoken to anyone for years, Pantoja could only communicate with them in mumbles. Although he could not speak, he could still cry. "Animals cry too," he explained.

Taken from the mountains, Pantoja was forced to live among a human community he neither knew nor cared about. He worked in hospitals and on construction sites to make a living, but he says he always felt cheated and exploited by his employers.

Disillusioned with the coldness of the human world, he returned to the mountains and tried to fit in with the wolf family he grew up with. But when Pantoja returned, it was not the world he remembered. “It wasn’t the same,” he says, and the wolves didn’t look at him the same way. After all, he was no longer a wolf boy. “I smelled human and I wore perfume,” he says.

This photo taken on March 14, 2006 shows part of the Sierra Morena mountain landscape in Spain. Photo: Josesanchez

His wolf friends refused to come near him to welcome him home. "You could tell they were there, you could hear them breathing, it gave you goosebumps… but it wasn't easy to see them," he said. "They were wolves, and if I called them they would answer, but they wouldn't come near me."

Where he once played, slept, and ate, there is now a grass hut and an electric gate. The wild world that raised him is rapidly disappearing.

Pantoja has been the subject of numerous anthropological studies. In 2010, a film was made about his life – called Entrelobos, which means “among wolves” – and featured him.

Mr. Pantoja in his home. Photo: Josesanchez

Despite being trapped in human society, Pantoja is not completely isolated. A group of environmentalists raised money to buy insulation and a furnace for his rural home – things he could not afford on his income. Pantoja also gives talks at local schools, telling students about his love of animals and the importance of the environment.

Pantoja will never truly be at home in the human world and will forever yearn for the freedom and simplicity of his former years with the wolves.

However, in a 2013 interview with the BBC, he said: "I'm used to this life now and it has a lot of things that I didn't have in the jungle like music or women. Women are a good reason to stay here."

He recalled a conversation with a doctor when he said other people "laughed at me because I didn't know anything about politics or football", the doctor advised him to "laugh back at them, my friend. Other people know less than you".