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Dwellings of Dali in want of more - or less - attention

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He is famous the world over as much for his madcap stunts and waxed moustache as for his surrealist paintings depicting melting watches or sexually explicit fantasies.

Salvador Dali, one of the art world's great showmen, was always the subject of heated controversy during his life, and continues to attract it almost two decades after his death in 1989.

Rumours of the artist signing blank lithographs are legendary and the corrupt coterie which surrounded Dali later in life gave rise to a series of court cases involving allegedly stolen paintings.

The latest rows involving the great surrealist concern two of his former homes - his birthplace in Figueres, in northeastern Spain, and the nearby village of Cadaques on the Costa Brava, where he spent many of his later years.

A seven-year battle has been fought over Dali's crumbling birthplace at No 6 Calle Monturiol in Figueres, which for years was distinguished by nothing more than a simple sign announcing that one of the most famous artists of the 20th century was born there on May 11, 1904.

The two-storey modernist-style house, which was home to Dali and his sister Ana Maria until 1912, had fallen into a state of disrepair until it was finally bought by the local council in the late 1990s.

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