Surreal - Salvador Dalí to be exhumed

A court in Madrid ruled that Dalí should be dug up because there are no other biological remains which can be used to determine paternity.

María Pilar Abel Martínez, from Catalonia, argues that Dalí had an affair with her mother, Antonia, in 1955, two decades after he married Gala, his muse.

Ms Martínez said the affair happened when her mother was working for a family who holidayed in Port-Lligat, a village on the Costa Brava where the artist and his wife were living.

The body will be exhumed from the Dalí Theatre-Museum, where it is buried in a crypt underneath the stage.

Dalí is reputed to have feared female genitalia and, in his autobiography, he claims he masturbated frequently, though he worried it would make him insane and impotent. His first major painting is entitled The Great Masturbator.

Ms Abel’s claim is against the Spanish tax office as well as the Gala-Dalí Foundation. The artist, who died in 1989, left his property to the Spanish state.