For someone who has been dead for 30 years, Salvador Dalí sure notches up a lot of news headlines – from being brought back to life as a deepfake or his body exhumed for a paternity case which still rages on, five years later.
In 2015, 61-year-old Spanish tarot card reader Maria Pilar Abel Martínez claimed to be the late Surrealist’s daughter. She filed a paternity suit and sued both the Spanish city of Girona, where she resides, as well as Dalí’s foundation, which has owned his estate since he passed in 1989.
Two years later, a judge ordered the artist’s body to be exhumed. Astonishingly, upon opening the crypt which he designed himself and was buried in in his hometown of Figueres, Catalonia, the late artist was found to have his moustache still in tact. Unfortunately for Martínez, the paternity test concluded that Dalí was not her father.
Earlier this week, a Madrid court dismissed an appeal which had been filed by Martínez in which she criticised the handling of Dalí’s remains. Now, three years on from the original exhumation, Martínez has been ordered by a Spanish court to foot the bill – estimated to be around €7,000. She has 20 days to appeal the court’s decision.
While Dalí was a man who repeatedly invented myths about himself, we’re sure that even his spirit is looking forward to a rest from this saga.
