Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), the maverick Catalan Surrealist, was an avowed monarchist, or as he sometimes described himself with characteristic paradox, an ‘anarcho-monarchist’. ‘I have always been a monarchist and an anarchist’, he said in the early 1970s, and he welcomed the restoration of the monarchy under Juan Carlos in 1975. ‘I am an avowed monarchist’, he proclaimed ten years later, adding that ‘Nothing of importance has ever been done under a republic’. 

Dalí was capricious in his politics, as he was in his art, and he alienated most fellow Surrealists by his flirtations with Francoism, despite his ‘anarchist’ sensibilities. It is worth noting that he never fully accepted the Surrealist label. Monarchism does, however, seem to have been a constant in his thinking. Sometimes he defended absolute monarchy as the ultimate ‘anti-bourgeois’ political system.

A footnote: I discovered (on Reddit - where else, lol?) this photo of Dalí as a young man, when his moustache was a normal length. It amuses me that he is wearing a Cricket sweater (or Cricket jumper, as we usually call it in Britain). This takes me back to my schoolboy and student days. I had never associated Salvador Dalí with Cricket 🏏 before and I find the connection rather … surreal. 

Salvador Dalí was an avowed monarchist