Public perception shifted dramatically in 2010 with the release of the feature film Entre lobos, directed by Gerardo Olivares. Actor Juan José Ballesta portrayed the young Marcos, while Rodríguez Pantoja appeared as himself in the closing sequence. The movie became a box office success in Spain, turning the aging shepherd into an overnight sensation.
Biologists, educators, and journalists sought him out for interviews. Anthropologist Gabriel Janer Manila, who had published a doctoral thesis on Rodríguez Pantoja in 1979, authenticated his psychological resilience and survival techniques. Rather than chasing commercial opportunities, Marcos used his platform to speak to school children across Spain, teaching them to respect wildlife and warning them about human greed.
His twilight years were spent far from Andalusia. Supported by environmentalists, friends, and local residents, he relocated to the small rural parish of Rante, in the municipality of San Cibrao das Viñas (Ourense, Galicia). There, in a modest stone cottage, he cultivated a vegetable patch and lived among dogs and domestic animals. He passed away at age 80, having found in the Galician hills a measure of the quiet solitude he had lost decades earlier.
