Short answer. No. Article 556 says possession of movables is not deemed lost as long as they remain under the control of the possessor, even if you temporarily do not know their whereabouts. Simply misplacing an item within your own control does not by itself terminate your possession.
What the law says
The possession of movables is not deemed lost so long as they remain under the control of the possessor, even though for the time being he may not know their whereabouts.
Civil Code, Article 556 — Possession Of Misplaced Movables. Read the full provision →
Possession does not require knowing exactly where a thing is
It might feel like losing track of an item means you have lost possession of it, but Article 556 rejects that assumption directly: "the possession of movables is not deemed lost so long as they remain under the control of the possessor, even though for the time being he may not know their whereabouts." Possession, in the legal sense, is about control over a thing, not about being able to point to its exact physical location at every moment.
What "control" means for this purpose
Control here refers to the item remaining within your sphere of influence — inside your home, your vehicle, your storage, or otherwise somewhere you have the practical ability to eventually locate and retrieve it, even if you have momentarily forgotten or cannot immediately determine exactly where. An item buried in a drawer, left in an unused room of your own house, or set down somewhere on your own property generally remains within your control in this sense, even though you may search for a while before finding it again.
When misplacement crosses into actual loss of possession
The protection in this article depends on the item staying within your control. If the item left your sphere entirely — for example, it fell out of your bag while you were out in public, or someone else took it away from wherever you had placed it — the situation changes, because the thing is no longer under your control at all, regardless of whether you know where it currently is. The dividing line the article draws is control, not simply your own momentary uncertainty about location.
Why this distinction matters practically
This rule matters because possession carries legal consequences — for prescription, for certain presumptions of ownership, and for what remedies are available if someone else later claims the item. Recognizing that a temporarily misplaced item within your own home or property remains legally in your possession means you have not lost whatever legal protections attach to that possession simply because you spent an afternoon looking for something that was, all along, still within your control.