Hello, Dali: Spain court orders exhumation of his remains

FIGUERES, Spain— Salvador Dali’s artistic and personal history took another bizarre turn Thursday with the exhumation of his embalmed remains in order to find genetic samples that could settle whether one of the founding figures of surrealism fathered a girl decades ago.

Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader, claims her mother had an affair with Dali while working as a domestic helper in the Spanish town of Figueres, where the artist was born and where he had moved back to be with his Russian wife Gala.

After two decades of court battles, a Madrid judge last month granted Abel a DNA test to find out whether her allegations are true. “I am amazed and very happy because justice may be delivered,” she said at the time, adding that a desire to honor her mother’s memory was motivating her paternity lawsuit. “I have fought a long time for this and I think I have the right to know.”

Her lawyer, Enrique Blanquez, said a judicial victory for Abel would give her a chance to seek onefourth of Dali’s estate in further lawsuits, in accordance with inheritance laws in Spain’s Catalonia region.

Dali and his wife had no children of their own although Gala — who died seven years before the painter — had a daughter from an earlier marriage to French poet Paul Eluard.

Upon his death in 1989 at age 84, Dali bestowed his estate to the Spanish state. His body was buried in his hometown’s local theatre, which now hosts the Dali TheaterMuseum.

A 1.5-ton stone slab was removed Thursday to open the crypt where Dali was interred 27 years ago. It remains to be seen if the chemicals used for preserving the artist’s body have damaged his genetic information, said Narcis Bardalet, who embalmed Dali in 1989.