Biescas transforms one of the most painful memories in Spain’s recent history into an extraordinary instrumental piece. The musician returns to the place where he nearly lost his life to do something different: to remember those who were unable to escape.
Some memories fade over the years. Others simply learn to live with you.
Ander Zubillaga was six years old when, on August 7, 1996, he was on vacation with his family at the Las Nieves campground in Biescas.
It was just another summer day. The pool. Games. Ping-pong. Family vacation.
Then it started to rain.
And everything changed.
Thirty years later, that boy is a professional musician and has decided to return to the place that shaped his life to do something that perhaps no interview could ever achieve: to recount that day without uttering a single word.
His new composition is simply titled Biescas.
And it’s probably the most important song I’ve ever written.
From Summer to Silence
The Biescas flood remains etched in the collective memory of the Spanish people.
An extraordinarily intense storm caused the Arás ravine to flood, and a massive torrent of water, mud, and debris swept down onto the Las Nieves campground. A total of 87 people died, including 27 children. Hundreds were injured.
Zubillaga was there.
And he remembers what happened with surprising clarity for someone who was only six years old at the time.
“I remember absolutely everything, as if it were yesterday,” the musician explained.
His personal history also includes one of those episodes that are hard to forget.
When the flood hit, his family was in the pool area. His father managed to break through the drop ceiling and get Ander to safety on a concrete beam.
They survived.
Many of those who were just a few meters away did not do so.
How does a memory like that become music?
That’s where the story of Biescas really begins.
The idea came to him unexpectedly about a year and a half ago. Zubillaga was playing guitar at his parents’ house when he realized that perhaps the time had come to confront that memory through music.
But he made a crucial decision.
I wouldn’t write a song.
Because perhaps there were no words capable of explaining it.
Zubillaga turned to his natural style: fingerstyle, a technique that allows the guitarist to simultaneously play melody, harmony, bass, and percussive elements.
And he turned the guitar into a storyteller.
“Biescas ” is structured like a movie without images
Listening to the piece while knowing its story completely changes the experience.
The beginning is deliberately intimate.
A nearly bare guitar captures that summer morning: the sense of normalcy, the games, the feeling that nothing bad can happen.
Then something changes.
The harmonies grow darker.
Tension arises.
The music begins to build up in layers, like the clouds that covered the sky over the Pyrenees that afternoon.
And then the storm hits.
Xabier Zeberio ‘s strings expand the emotional space, while Igor Arostegui ‘s orchestral percussion evokes an almost physical sense of danger.
Until the voices of the Hodeiertz choir come in.
We are no longer listening only to a child’s recollection.
We are listening to a collective memory.
And after the chaos, nothing
Perhaps the most powerful moment in Biescas is precisely when the music stops.
The composition builds until it reaches a climax in which the percussion, guitar, strings, and vocals seem to burst forth.
And then there is silence.
Zubillaga remembers exactly that from that night.
The silence that followed.
“After all the chaos, silence remains,” he explained regarding the structure of the composition.
That silence serves as the song’s final instrument.
There’s no need to explain anything else.
The music video forced Ander Zubillaga to return
If writing the song meant confronting the memory, shooting the music video was even harder.
Zubillaga returned to the site of the former Las Nieves campground.
The crew filmed right in the area where that bathhouse stood—the one that had served as a refuge for his family thirty years earlier.
The decision transforms the video into something that goes far beyond the usual concept of a music video.
The musician does not perform ” Biescas ” on a stage built for the occasion.
She interprets it based on her own memory.
Who is Ander Zubillaga?
The story behind Biescas could easily overshadow the musician, but it’s worth taking a moment to focus on him as well.
Born in Tolosa in 1990, Zubillaga began studying the accordion at age eight and later found his true calling in the guitar. He has been a professional musician for over fourteen years and has been a member of or collaborated with numerous projects on the Basque music scene, including Xabi Solano, Izaro, Huntza, Iker Lauroba, and Mikel Moreno.
His solo career has been built around fingerstyle, blending it with elements from blues, country, and rock.
In 2023, he published *Itsasoan Elurra* , and in March 2025, Ander Zubillaga Live, which stemmed from a performance in Donostia where he opened for El Twanguero. Shortly thereafter came another important moment: playing alongside Tommy Emmanuel, one of the world’s leading figures in fingerstyle guitar, during his Guitar Camp in Rome.
All that technical background now leads to something much easier to explain.
A guitar used to tell a story.
When Technique No Longer Matters
And perhaps that is where Biescas’s true greatness lies.
We could talk about Zubillaga’s fingerstyle technique, his dynamic shifts, the cinematic structure of the piece, or how he uses percussion and vocals to expand the narrative possibilities of a guitar.
But after listening to her, all that seems secondary.
Because here, technology serves the purpose of preserving memory.
Zubillaga doesn’t seem interested in showing off what he can do with six strings. He wants to express something that has been inside him for thirty years.
And that completely changes the scope of the composition.
August 7, 2026, thirty years later
Tomorrow marks exactly 30 years since the Biescas tragedy.
Three decades later, that campground no longer exists, but the memory lives on in those who survived, in the families of those who died, and in a society that still recalls the images of that night.
Subsequent events also showed that this was not simply an inevitable catastrophe. Years later, the National Court concluded that the tragedy had been foreseeable and preventable, and held the relevant government agencies accountable.
That’s why remembering matters.
And that’s why Biescas now takes on a different meaning.
It does not seek to recreate the horror or use it as a spectacle.
It aims to preserve memory.
Zubillaga himself sums it up much better: he wanted to do it with respect and ensure that those who lived through it would be left with “something beautiful.”
That might be the phrase that best explains this song.
Because thirty years later, a boy who survived Biescas has finally found a way to return there.
This time, he’s only playing a guitar.
