A Spanish doctor who was declared dead in 2010 has been discovered living in a makeshift shelter in a thickly wooded part of Italy.
Carlos Sánchez Ortiz de Salazar was 28 when he vanished from his home in Seville in 1996 while he was suffering from severe depression.
Nothing was heard from him over the course of 14 years and the authorities issued a legal declaration of his death.
A fortnight ago, two mushroom hunters spotted a trail of dirty plastic water bottles in a thickly wooded hillside near the Tuscan town of Scalino. Following it they stumbled across a rough camp.
Fear made them turn back but they notified the chief forest ranger and all three returned to the camp.
“I'm Spanish, my name is Carlos and I've been living here since 1997,” the man said to the trio. “I don't want to live among people: now that you have found me I need to get out of here.”
Having been asked for identification, the man retrieved a faded and out-of-date passport bearing the name Carlos Sánchez Ortiz de Salazar. Before leaving, the group took photos of his passport with their smartphones.
The authorities were notified along with the missing persons' association, Penelope, in Italy and its counterpart, S.O.S Desaparecidos, in Spain.
The authorities contacted the man’s family who quickly travelled to Italy.
“That's him – that's our Carlos,” sobbed his parents when they saw the photo of his passport. “He is alive and that is the most important thing,” they told journalists.
But when the parents joined a search party they found that Salazar, now 47, had already decamped.
“There was no sign of him,” said Scarlino’s mayor, Marcello Stella. “Who knows if we will find him again.”
His parents have vowed to continue searching the forest until they find their son, after having believed him to be dead for so long.
“We respect his will and his freedom but we're not leaving until we have held him in our arms again – even if it is just for one last time," his mother Amelia said.
It is not known how he has survived so long in the deep forest. Some suggest he might have cultivated some food, while others believe he might have foraged food from dustbins at the edges of nearby towns.
Just last week a couple were found living under an overhanging rock on an Italian mountain. They had been living rough for six months with only sleeping bags, some pans and a stone fireplace in an area which has temperatures below zero at night.
“In spite of being out there so long they were healthy and in good spirits, if a bit cold and hungry,” reported one of the rangers who encouraged them to rethink their plan.
“They weren't hermits or primitive – they were just two people who had decided upon a certain lifestyle. One which they had been living for some time,” the forest ranger said.
