Woman claiming to be Salvador Dali's 'secret daughter' says she is relieved his body will be exhumed
The woman who claims to be the secret daughter of surrealist master Salvador Dali has said she is “relieved” after winning the court battle to exhume his body for DNA tests.
"I am very positive you know what I mean," Maria Pilar Abel told a press conference. "I think that it has been long enough."
The 61-year-old gained permission from Catalonia's High Court to obtain samples from the famed surrealist artist's body that will settle the question of her paternity last month.
Officials at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, a spokeswoman for the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation confirmed that his body will be exhumed today.
Imma Parada told the New York Post that the museum will not be accessible during the exhumation and no photos will be allowed.
Ms Abel has claimed that she was the result of an affair while her mother was working as an employee at the Dali household in the 1950s.
She said last week that she was searching “for my identity, to find out who I am.”
She added: “I just want the truth to be known.”
She said she hopes to change her surname to Dali and is not motivated by thoughts of a potential inheritance.
“My father deserves more than that,” she added.
However, her lawyer Enrique Blazquez, said that if the test was confirmed “under Catalan law and we are talking about a quarter part of the estate, patrimony that Dali left.”
He added: "This includes copyright, paintings and everything else. But this is something that we will deal with when the time comes."
Ms Abel, a divorced mother of four who reportedly works as a tarot card reader for a Spanish television station, said she found out about the purported affair between Dalí and her mother from her grandmother.
She never approached the artist about the possible link, despite occasionally seeing him in their hometown.
“We never spoke but we’d look at each other a lot … How could I ask him?” said. “I was just a girl.”
She took a DNA test in 2007 using skin and hair remnants obtained from a “death mask” of the painter, but the results were inconclusive, The Guardian reported.
Dali died in 1989 with no known children. He had only one serious partner, Russian Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, better known as Gala Dali.
The artist met her 1929 and they remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives. She died in 1982.
Some scholars have suggested that the artist struggled with his sexuality and some have cast doubt on the suggestions that he would have an affair.
The exhumation should resolve those questions, although Ms Abel said she would not be present.
The Salvador Dali Foundation has lodged an appeal against the ruling.
