Spanish Athlete Spends 500 Days in Cave

A 50-year-old Spanish elite athlete, Beatriz Flamini, emerged Friday from a cave in southern Spain, where she had lived 70 meters underground for 500 days, as part of an experiment on the effects of isolation on the human mind and body.

With her support team limiting media coverage of her emergence so as not to overwhelm her, Flamini climbed out of the Los Gauchos cave near Motril, smiled and waved to the small crowd. Noting she had been underground for a year-and-a-half, Flamini asked, "Who was buying the beer?"

Elena Mera, a spokeswoman for the project, known as Timecave, told the Spanish news agency EFE the isolation experiment was Flamini's idea. An experienced mountaineer, solo climber and self-sufficiency expert, she approached the media production company Dokumalia in 2021 about the idea of living in a cave alone with no external contact for 500 days. 

According to her support team, Flamini entered the cave November 20, 2021, taking with her two GoPro cameras to document her time, 60 books and 1,000 liters of water and food supplies. She had no way to measure time. They say she spent her time doing exercises to keep herself fit, painting and drawing, and knitting woolly hats.

Flamini was monitored by a group of psychologists, researchers, speleologists — specialists in the study of caves — and physical trainers, who watched her every move and monitored her physical and mental well-being, though they never made contact.

EFE reports her experience has been used by scientists at the universities of Granada and Almeria and a Madrid-based sleep clinic.

While her support team has claimed the 500 days in isolation underground is a new world record, the Reuters news service reports a spokesman for the Guinness Book of World Records was not able to immediately confirm that claim.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters and Agence France-Presse.