Salvador Dali’s body removed from crypt for DNA check for woman claiming to be his child

The Spanish woman who claims to be Salvador Dali’s daughter is relieved but nervous as forensic experts remove the artists’ body from a crypt where it laid for 27 years, her lawyer says.

Enrique Blanquez says that Pilar Abel “is nervous and hopeful” as the DNA test ordered by a judge should allow “99 per cent of chances of knowing the truth.”

“These tests will be a relief for her because all doubts will disappear,” the attorney told reporters.

Abel, who for a while made her living by reading tarot cards on local television, was born 61 years ago in Girona. The city is close to Figueres, the birthplace of Dali and where his body is interred.

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She has prompted the exhumation because she wants legal proof that the artist was her biological father after an alleged affair between her mother and Dali.

If proved right, she could claim one fourth of the painter’s estate which is now in the hands of a public foundation, Blanquez said.

Catalonia’s High Court says forensic experts have successfully removed biological samples from Salvador Dali’s body 27 years after it was embalmed and interred in a museum dedicated to the painter’s memory.

The court’s statement didn’t say which parts of Dali’s remains provided the samples. The Justice department for the northeastern Spanish region had previously announced plans to extract four teeth, nails and the marrow of a long bone.

Dali died in 1989 and was buried in Figueres, the town where he was born 84 years earlier. Last month, a Madrid judge ruled that the artist’s remains should be exhumed to settle a paternity lawsuit brought by Pilar Abel, a 61 year-old tarot card reader.

On Thursday, technicians started by removing a heavy stone slab that gave access to the crypt with Dali’s tomb. A small committee of five people oversaw the opening of the coffin and the removal of biological samples for genetic study. This process took one hour and 20 minutes, officials said.

The samples will now travel to a forensic lab in Madrid, where an analysis could take weeks.

During a press conference this week, Abel explained how her mother and grandmother told the family secret when Abel was still young. Years later, she confronted the mother by asking: “Is Dali really my father? Because he was a little bit ugly.”

“Well, he had a certain thing about him,”Abel says that her mother replied. “Yes, he is your father.”