Rock Guitarist Rescued From the Street by a Fan

Gustavo Bazterrica, known as El Vasco, is remembered as a guitarist with the Argentine rock band Los Abuelos de la Nada. Tiempo Argentino adds that he worked on projects with Charly García and Luis Alberto Spinetta, that he recorded the solo album Joven Blando in 1987, and that in recent years he had led a project called Bazterrícolas. A benefit concert titled Todos por el Vasco Bazterrica was held in 2018 to help him.

The article says he had faced years of financial and health difficulties. At the end of December 2021, at the age of 66, he wrote on Facebook that, because of irreconcilable differences with his partner, he no longer had anywhere to live. He asked for a temporary place to stay while a pension he had applied for was being processed. The reports do not say what kind of pension it was or how far along the application was.

Diario UNO, in an article from early January 2022, tells what happened next. A young man named Emiliano Bustos had met Bazterrica days earlier at a cash machine. The musician had trouble moving and could barely walk, so Bustos helped him and let him go ahead in the queue. When Bazterrica later asked for help on social media, Bustos answered and took him to his home.

There he helped him to wash, gave him food and bought him medicine. Bustos explained that he had not helped because of who Bazterrica was, since he did not know at the time, but because he was thinking that everyone gets old.

Tiempo Argentino reported that the guitarist was showing signs of improvement after being taken in. The reports describe a respected musician in his sixties who found shelter through the kindness of a stranger and a public plea.