British man dies after falling from Spanish bridge while capturing social media content

The Castilla-La Mancha Bridge stands at 192m tall in Talavera de la Reina, Spain. Photo / MambaVerde, via Wikimedia Commons

A British man plunged to his death from a bridge in Spain while creating social media content, local authorities said, in a deadly incident that underscores the potential perils of the live-action era of the internet.

The 26-year-old, who has not yet been identified, was scaling the Castilla-La Mancha Bridge in central Spain when he fell.

The man and a fellow Briton, age 24, had come to the Talavera de la Reina area to climb the bridge to “create content for social networks”, Macarena Munoz, the local councillor for citizen security, said in a government statement.

Climbing the roughly 192m cable-stayed bridge is strictly prohibited, Munoz said, and officials have reiterated on many occasions that it “cannot be done under any circumstances”. The local official described the incident in a Sunday statement as “unfortunate”.

Britain’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A recent survey by YouTube found 65% of younger internet users consider themselves to be video content creators, a shift from previous generations that were more likely to view than create their own online content, The Washington Post reported previously.

With that shift comes new risks, public safety experts say, as some internet influencers go to extreme lengths to create unique videos.

Five teens were arrested last year for climbing one of the Williamsburg Bridge towers in New York. One of the teenage boys later told the New York Post he had been climbing the city’s tallest structures for two years before being apprehended – regularly posting images of his dangerous stunts on Instagram.

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Travel Medicine found 379 people died while taking selfie images at precarious spots around the world – including bridges and railway tracks – between 2008 and 2021. Many more were injured.

Falls from heights were the most common cause of death, the study found. Many victims were young, and the risks were especially high among young men.

Another study in 2018 analysed news reports and found 259 selfie-related deaths from October 2011 to November 2017.

Last year, a group of Australian experts called for social media exploits to be deemed an official public health hazard after a string of deadly incidents on clifftops or near waterfalls.