British brother and sister who drowned off beach in Spain named
Their father, Ricardo, had also entered the water but was rescued alive by emergency services and taken to hospital after being pulled from the water unconscious, according to local media reports.
A GoFundMe page was set up on Thursday by a friend of the family, Holly Marquis-Johnson, and a relative, Macalia Del-Brocco, to help cover the cost of bringing the children's bodies home to the UK and 'ease the financial burden' of the family – and has so far raised around £25,000.
Ms Marquis-Johnson paid tribute to 'Maya and Jubs', the children's nicknames, writing: 'Maya was intelligent, thoughtful, and growing into a strong young woman.
'Ricardo Junior was playful, kind, and always smiling.
'They brought so much love, laughter, and energy into the lives of everyone around them.
'Their absence has left an unbearable silence not just for their parents, but for their whole family, who were incredibly close and shared an unbreakable bond.'
She said the siblings' mother and father were 'absolutely heartbroken'.
Ms Marquis-Johnson wrote: 'Their mum and dad, Shanice and Ricardo, are absolutely heartbroken.
'But they're not grieving alone. Their siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents, and close friends are all devastated by this loss.
'Maya and Jubs were surrounded by a family who adored them, and who are now left trying to make sense of life without them.
'This fundraiser has been created to help ease some of the financial burden the family is now facing, covering the costs of bringing Maya and Jubs home to the UK, giving them the dignified farewell they deserve, and supporting their parents and loved ones during this incredibly painful time.'
Emergency services were called to Llarga beach in Salou, near Tarragona, shortly after 8.45pm local time on Tuesday evening, Catalonia's Civil Protection agency said.
Local police, medical and fire services all attended the incident, while a team of psychologists were also at the scene to assist the victims' family.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Jose Luis Gargallo, the head of the local police force in Salou, told reporters: 'There were three people who were having serious difficulty getting out of the sea.
'There was a father with his son and daughter, of British nationality.
'When they got out, both of them, the boy and girl, aged 11 and 13, showed no signs of life.
'Attempts were made to resuscitate them with CPR, but they were unsuccessful.
'The father, fortunately, was able to be saved. He had swallowed a lot of water, he was exhausted, very fatigued, but the father was able to be saved thanks to the emergency services.'
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: 'We are supporting the family of two British children who have died in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.'
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Some are even run by entire teams of volunteers: there's GazaFunds and Radio Watermelon on X and Instagram, and Gaza Vetters on Tumblr. Still, Shah said, she wished there was a better system in place. 'This centers me too much,' she said. Shah has been on Bluesky since the early days of the relatively young platform's life, when she had only about 7,000 followers and knew of only one person from Gaza with a Bluesky account, Jamal. That's how her verification project started: she had encouraged Jamal, a friend of a friend, to open a Bluesky account and shared his posts on her own profile, hoping to bring attention to his crowdfunding campaign in 2023. It worked. Jamal raised enough money to leave Gaza. Shah's verification project snowballed as more people in Gaza joined the social network. Many reached out to her, hoping she'd share their campaigns with her now 57,000 followers. She began asking for information about the individuals or families in the campaigns before sharing them, and that's how her guerrilla authentication network got its start. Today, Shah has a spreadsheet of more than 300 accounts she's vetted and verified. They use the same badge of authentication as Al-Batsh, 'verified by Molly Shah', in their posts and profile pages. The stamp doesn't always prevent a Bluesky account from being flagged as spam by the company's systems, but her hope is that it will help other people on Bluesky confirm that the person behind the account is genuine. 'The verification seems to help people recognize that they're real people,' Shah said. 'I just want people to get to know Palestinians. To me, I don't think of it as fundraising as the main goal, though I'm happy to help them do that. I think of it as [combatting] the persistent and insistent dehumanization of Palestinians.' 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Lately, diapers and milk have been harder to find, she said, and she'll go some days without eating so that she can feed her children. 'My child wears nylon bags, no diapers. He suffers from diaper rash,' Al-Madhoun said. 'Food is scarce and very expensive. If food is available, I just eat some rice.' Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion The impact of a fundraiser can be near immediate, according to Nat Calhoun, who aids several families in Gaza with their campaigns. In one case, Calhoun said, a family they are in touch with in Mawasi, Khan Younis, reached out to them about an older woman in their town who had not eaten for several days. They were able to raise $110 to buy her flour and transferred the money to her the next day. 'It can be instantaneous,' Calhoun said. 'I don't think people realize that your help can make an impact in a day.' To receive the money collected through fundraisers, Palestinians need to work with a 'receiver', someone outside of Gaza who sets up the campaign and collects the money on their behalf and wires the money through their banks. That's because the platforms use payment processors that do not operate in Gaza. The system has meant that Palestinians have been required to place a great deal of trust in these middle actors, who are people they've never met. It also means the campaigns, and the Palestinians relying on them, are vulnerable to scams. Calhoun and Shah say many of the scams they do see exploit and victimize Palestinians. Al-Batsh's first campaign was hosted on GoFundMe by a woman who listed her location as Tucson, Arizona. The campaign raised nearly $37,000. Al-Batsh received about $34,000 before the campaign host told Al-Batsh that she had trouble logging into the campaign. 'I never received the rest of the money,' Al-Batsh said. 'It breaks my brain to think about,' Calhoun said. 'It's frustrating because the people in Gaza can't make their own fundraisers. They're at the whims of somebody else and they have to trust somebody to do good by them.' A spam label on Bluesky is enough to deter donations. Ad hoc verification systems like Shah's provide some level of guarantee that the money people are donating will actually help someone in Gaza rather than a bot farm or scammer. When Shah shares a campaign, it makes a difference. Al-Batsh's campaign has received 10 donations ranging from $5 to $505 in the two days since Shah shared her post. Before that, she was averaging two to three donations a day, if that. Though her verification network has helped some Palestinians maintain their online lifelines, Shah says it's not a sustainable system. She is overwhelmed with requests and had to decide to share only one account a day. In the meantime, thousands of Bluesky users have signed open letters and made public pleas asking the company to improve its moderation practices. 'We understand that some Gazans post in a way that may trigger some of Bluesky's internal automated spam rules when posting fundraising links,' one of the open letters, with 7,000 signatures, reads. 'However, treating a group of extremely vulnerable people the same way that the platform treats t-shirt bots and phishers is not only incredibly cruel, it has also exacerbated the situation of desperate people just attempting to survive.' Bluesky said in response to the open letter that the company was 'committed to ensuring' people in Gaza 'can be heard' on the platform. However, it continued, some of the behaviors of these accounts violated community guidelines, and it encouraged users to 'focus their efforts through authentic accounts'. Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment. 'We can't get every moderation decision right, which is why we maintain an appeals process,' the post continued. Shah and others connected with people in Gaza say few people get a response from the company when they file an appeal. It remains difficult for Palestinians to maintain their accounts for more than a few days. Bluesky had an opportunity to improve its moderation system in the early days of the war in Gaza, when there were fewer people on the platform, Shah said. She wishes they had taken it. 'It sounds like Bluesky is saying: 'We're getting rid of spammers,' but really what they're getting rid of are people who are desperate,' she said.
