Valentin Zubiaurre was a Spanish composer who was a professor at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and worked at the Chapel Royal Zubiaurre was born in Garay, a Basque town in the province of Biscay on 13 February 1837. His first musical experience was as a choirboy in Bilbao, and he later went on to study the organ. He traveled to Latin America in 1852, where he taught music until 1866, when he returned to Spain. This proved to be fruitful, as in 1869 he won the National Music Competition for an opera called Ferdinand Set.