Very sad news this week as a British influencer plunged to his death while attempting to scale Spain’s tallest bridge; the 630ft Castilla-La Mancha bridge in Talavera de la Reina, a 90-minute drive south-west of Madrid.
26-year-old Lewis Stevenson fell from the bridge while filming content for his social media channels. The local Spanish town council put out a statement basically saying “we told you so”:
”He was a 26-year-old Englishman who fell while climbing the aforementioned bridge, something which the councillor has made clear is totally prohibited and that we have reiterated on numerous occasions cannot be done under any circumstances.”
Indeed, it is strictly prohibited to climb the Castilla-La Mancha bridge, but at the end of the day, social media content isn’t going to film itself.
Lewis’s girlfriend Savannah Parker, 25, says the pair spoke for the final time as Lewis set off to scale the bridge with another British rooftopper.
She said: ‘We spoke at half eleven and the last thing he said to me was, “Good night, I love you”.’
Savannah told MailOnline she believes Lewis may have passed out and lost his grip on his way up the landmark.
She said: ‘He didn’t just fall. He lost consciousness because he wasn’t feeling well. His friend who he was with sent me over his police statement. He told his friend he wasn’t feeling well and he said, “Shall we go back down?” Lewis said, “Give me a minute”, and that’s when he lost consciousness and slipped.’
Lewis was no stranger to death-defying stunts and urban climbs, having done it for the last five years. So it’s absolutely brutal luck that he managed to pass out in the middle of his latest climb and fall to his death as a result.
Savannah added: ‘As much as it worries me, I don’t look into things because I worry enough as it is, and I just let him do his thing and generally he just comes back. This weekend he didn’t,’ she added. It is one thing to hear that he’s gone but it’s how tragic it happened.’
Oppositely, Lewis’s granddad Clifford Stevenson, 70, revealed the family ‘all tried to talk him out of’ his latest stunt.
He said: ‘We all tried to talk him out of it. We were always trying to talk him out of doing things but that was the way he was. He loved doing it, always went out there believing he’d be alright. He did what he did for his own pleasure. He did not get any money for it – he was an adventurer.’
A big shame he went ahead with the climb even though he was apparently not feeling 100% on the day. I mean, he shouldn’t have been climbing the bridge in the first place as it’s prohibited and all, but still. Just such a tragic and unfortunate incident that it actually feels wrong to say something like ‘he died doing what he loved’.
RIP Lewis and let’s hope other climbs learn from this tragedy.
For unreal footage of a black bear attacking a climber in Japan, click HERE.