Un grupo de 14 turistas se vieron

Un grupo de 14 turistas se vieron
 

I read this today in semana.com, a sad commentary on the state of affairs today in Cartagena de Indias.



"Un grupo de 14 turistas españoles se vieron envueltos en una situación de insultos y amenazas por no adquirir servicios turísticos."


I'm on the lookout for instances of verse, so I tried to analyze this. It seems to me that verse here is equivalent to hallarse (reflexive to find oneself), so I think I have that right.


But I'm wondering why we don't have se vio instead of se vieron given that un grupo is singular. That is why not "a group found itself involved" rather than "a group found themselves involved"?


Is there a grammatical rule in Spanish to cover this?

If it were just un grupo thense vio would be the correct verb to use. Because it was followed by 14 turistas, the verb tense had to change to third person plural.

Just as 'group' can take a singular or plural third person verb in English, depending on the emphasis you want to give, Spanish follows suit.

If you want to speak about the group as a whole, the verb to use is «se vio». If you want to draw attention to the members of that group, switch to the plural third person.