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"Four people missing on Calafell beach", a message, shared on Twitter this weekend, sent by a journalist from Catalan radio station RAC1, put everyone on alert. It was sent from Calafell beach, on the Costa Daurada between Barcelona and Tarragona, and was accompanied by a photograph of the very front line of the beach, showing four empty beach chairs and two parasols and no clue as to the owners' whereabouts. The second part of the message, which went viral and has accumulated thousands of likes and almost 500 retweets, helped to make sense of what was happening. Eva Catalán affirmed: "Great concern in case their pompous asses explode in some beach bar nearby".

Mystery half solved. The four bathers had not, it seems, been swallowed by the waters of Mare Nostrum, which was calm at this point in the Baix Penedès county, but rather, had staked their claim to the first line on the sands with parasols and beach chairs in the early morning and had then left, leaving their fold-up furniture set up, to avoid losing the place. With delicious humour, the RAC1 journalist and producer denounced a situation that is frustratingly common on Catalan beaches, that is, this irregular occupation of public space with chairs and other artefacts to reserve the best spots on the beach - despite the owners having gone off to lunch or to an extended session at the nearest beach bar.

Eva Catalán's message, published at two in the afternoon on the midsummer holiday of Sant Joan, began to spread like wildfire on Twitter. Dozens of people also sent images of other similar situations, some of them old, but also in Calafell, including one image that showed over a dozen beach chairs placed with the same strategy as the one denounced by the RAC1 journalist. 

"Invisible bathers"

Looks like it's not the first time that it's happened. Users have in the past published images of this selfish beach behaviour by people who leave their placeholders despite leaving the beach for hours at a time. Some experienced observers have dubbed them "invisible bathers" and called for the collaboration of experts in paranormal phenomena. Kidnapped by aliens, perhaps? Other Twitter users suggested they were maybe just off for a healthy walk along the sand, but the reporter seemed to have an answer to that: from 11 am to 3pm? Strange, if nothing else.

And what's the solution?

Solutions to this selfish occupation of space in what is everyone's beach have already been suggested. The dozens of people who responded to Eva Catalán's tweet are clear about what to do. Some of them choose to remove the chairs if no one sits on them within a reasonable time. Some opt to throw them into the sea - the most radical - or alert municipal staff to remove and confiscate them, and only return them in exchange for the payment of a fine of 5 euros - the more moderate. We will see if Calafell opts for any of these solutions to avoid further scares about missing bathers.