Dali’s remains to be dug up to settle fortune teller’s paternity claim
Woman who says she looks like Surrealist ‘without the moustache’ sues state to be recognised as his daughter
A SPANISH judge has ordered the ex- humation of Salvador Dalí’s body for DNA testing to settle a claim by a TV fortune teller that she is the secret daughter of the Surrealist painter.
Pilar Abel Martínez, 61, from Dalí’s home town of Figueres in Catalonia, has for several years insisted she is the product of a “clandestine love affair” between her mother and the artist. She is suing the Gala-salvador Dalí Foundation and the Spanish state, which inherited his works, to be recognised as his biological daughter.
Ms Abel, who describes herself as “Dalí without the moustache”, had arranged to carry out a test using material from his death mask. However, insufficient DNA was found, and the Madrid judge overseeing the case has now ruled there is no other way to obtain samples than to disinter Dalí’s remains.
No date for the exhumation has yet been announced, but, according to Ms Abel’s lawyer, it could be carried out as soon as next month. It will be neither an easy nor a discreet procedure: the artist’s body is buried in a crypt beneath the stage in the Dalí Theatre-museum in Figueres, where he died from heart failure in 1989, aged 84.
The fortune teller, who hosted a tarot card-reading show on local television, claims she learnt she was Dalí’s daughter as a young child, from the woman who was purportedly her paternal grandmother. “I know you’re not the daughter of my son, that you are that of a great painter, but I love you equally,” the grandmother used to say – according to Spanish daily El Pais – teasing her that she was “strange like her father”.
Ms Abel’s mother, Antonia Martínez, also spoke frequently about the romance, which allegedly took place in 1955 in the nearby coastal town of Cadaques. Dalí and his wife Gala had returned from New York and were living in Cadaques – their house there is now a museum – while Ms Abel’s mother was working for a local family.
Then 25, Ms Martínez struck up a friendship with the 51-year-old artist, which allegedly developed into an affair. She returned to Figueres shortly afterwards and, while pregnant, married another man, before giving birth to Ms Abel in February 1956.
Ms Abel says she crossed paths with Dali four or five times, and has suggested her gift for clairvoyance was inherited from the master of Surrealism.
The Gala-salvador Dali Foundation said it would challenge the exhumation order and was working on an appeal.