36 2GM Thursday November 26 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Migrants die after boat
capsizes off Lanzarote
Spain At least eight people
drowned off the Canary Islands
after a boat carrying more than
35 migrants from north Africa
capsized. Rescue workers, who
are still searching for those
missing, carried bodies on
stretchers over the jagged rocks
of Orzola beach in Lanzarote
before covering them with
blankets. About 17,000 people
have completed the 870-mile
crossing to the islands off
Morocco, ten times the total last
year, and hundreds have died
trying. The Spanish government
has promised to help the local
authorities to build shelters as
thousands of migrants are left to
sleep out in the open. (Reuters)Last-minute diplomacy
to end Ethiopia conflict
Ethiopia African Union envoys
travelled to Ethiopia hours before
an ultimatum was to expire last
night for northern forces to
surrender in a three-week war.
Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister,
threatened an assault on Mekelle,
home to half a million people,
unless Tigrayan fighters laid down
their weapons. About 42,000
refugees have fled to Sudan and
rockets have hit Eritrea. (Reuters)Swiss knife attacker
was a known jihadist
Switzerland A 28-year-old woman
who stabbed one person in the
neck and grabbed another by the
throat in a department store was
a known jihadist who fell in love
with a militant online and tried in
vain to meet him in Syria, police
said. Federal prosecutors are
investigating the incident on
Tuesday, in the Italian-speaking
canton of Ticino, as a suspected
terrorist attack. (Reuters)EU moves to protect
intellectual property
European Union Brussels is
planning tougher laws to prevent
countries acquiring European
companies’ intellectual property,
a move that could strain relations
with China and the United States.
In March the EU effectively
blocked an attempt by the US to
gain access to patents developed
by CureVac, a German company
pioneering a technology to
produce vaccines. (Reuters)Mine damages tanker
in port near Yemen
Saudi Arabia A mine in the Red
Sea near Yemen has punctured
the hull of an oil tanker, the latest
incident targeting the kingdom in
its war against Houthi rebels. The
MT Agrari, a Greek vessel under
a Maltese flag, was hit about 1m
above the waterline. Ambrey, a
British security firm, reported
that the explosion was in the port
limits of Shuqaiq, just north of
the border with Yemen. (AP)Car crashes into gate at
Merkel’s office building
Germany A driver aged 54 was
arrested after his car hit a gate at
the building housing the offices of
Angela Merkel, the chancellor,
Berlin police said. The gate was
slightly damaged by the
Volkswagen, which was daubed
with political slogans. In 2014 a
nearly identical car hit the same
gate with a man aged 48 driving.
Reports then said he had done
something similar before. (AP)Letters from the composer Frédéric
Chopin have been bowdlerised by
translators to downplay his erotic
correspondence with male friends, a
Swiss documentary has claimed.
The Polish virtuoso’s personal life
was sanitised to exaggerate his roman-
tic interest in women, such as the
French novelist George Sand, while
suppressing evidence of intense attach-
ments to men, the report suggests.
The claims are sensitive in Poland,
where the ruling party campaigns
against the “rainbow plague” of gay
rights. Chopin is one of the country’s
cultural figureheads. His heart, pre-
served at the Holy Cross Church in
Warsaw, is venerated by nationalists.
His sexuality, however, has long been
a matter of debate. As a teenager he
Bullfighting brothers from Spain’s most
prominent matador dynasty have
started a legal action to recover historic
heirlooms that their father’s widow
claimed were stolen decades ago but
which were recently found “hidden” at
her property.
In a case that has gripped Spain,
Francisco and Cayetano Rivera, the
glamorous sons of Francisco Rivera,
considered one of the greatest ever
bullfighters, have issued a legal notice
to Isabel Pantoja, a celebrity singer and
their stepmother, demanding that she
hand over a trove of their father’s mem-
orabilia that they should have inherited
after he was gored by a bull in 1984.
During protracted wrangling over
their father’s will in the 1990s the broth-
ers had asked Ms Pantoja to give them
the heirlooms bequeathed to them, but
she stated in court that they had been
stolen. However, Francisco José Rivera,
her son, has revealed to his half-broth-
ers that he saw their inheritance this
summer in a room at her country estate
that is normally kept locked. The cache
includes examples of their father’s traje
de luces, or bullfighter’s “suit of lights”,
his capes, medals and swords, and a
small portable “chapel”, a wooden case
that usually holds a religious statue to
which matadors pray before a fight.
“We have lodged a legal request
demanding that Señora Pantoja
immediately hand over the
goods she supposedly has in
her possession
that belong to
Francisco and
Cayetano Riv-
era,” Joaquín
Moeckel, the
bullfighters’
lawyer, said.
“We have
given her 48
hours to re-
spond to our
demand.”
The Rivera brothers’
great-grandfather, Cayetano
Ordóñez, was a fabled bull-
fighter immortalised in the
works of Ernest Hemingway.
Their bullfighting grand-
father, Antonio Ordóñez, was
also a great friend of
the American
writer as well as
the film director
Orson Welles,
whose ashes
were scattered
at the matadors’
family estate in
southern Spain.
Mr Moeckel
said that the con-
tested heirlooms
were part of thedynasty’s history. “Their value in mon-
etary terms is almost nil,” he added,
“but they are of very important senti-
mental value. I appeal to the common
sense of this señora. She can no longer
make excuses for not handing them
over.”
Ms Pantoja, 64, who after her hus-
band’s death became known as “Spain’s
widow”, has not commented on the
case. Her daughter, Isa, said that her
brother’s disclosure of the whereabouts
of the heirlooms to their half-brothers
was not wrong but that he had not actedin the “best way”. The feud over the
brothers’ “lost” inheritance has been a
cause of bitterness between the bull-
fighters, who are in their forties, and
their stepmother, whom they dubbed
an “evil person”.
The ballad singer is no stranger to
controversy. In 2013 she was sentenced
to two years in jail for money launder-
ing in a massive property and bribery
scandal in Marbella. She was convicted
of helping Julián Muñoz, the former
mayor of Marbella, then her boyfriend,
to hide illegal proceeds from his covert
business dealings.
Of Gypsy descent, Ms Pantoja was
born in the Seville neighbourhood of
Triana, which is considered the cradle
of flamenco. She was a child performer
who flourished due to her talent for
singing coplas, a popular type ofAndalusian song that had fallen out
of fashion. She has since seldom been
absent from gossip.
“Not having recovered the things my
father left us had grieved my mother
and I cannot forgive that,” Francisco
Rivera said. “When people are driven
by greed, problems come. A family has
to respect the wishes of the dead.”
If the quarrel is not settled amicably
the lawyer said the brothers may de-
mand that Ms Pantoja face charges for
allegedly lodging a false theft case, and
for alleged theft.Bullfighting dynasty locks
horns over ‘stolen heirlooms’
thathadfallenoutFrancisco, above left, and Cayetano Rivera say that their
stepmother, left, stole bequests from their father, rightSpain
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid
AGENCIA EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; LOOMIS DEAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; ALAMYPoland tries to cover up
Chopin’s gay love letters
Poland
Oliver Moody Berlin
A Paris art fair is facing
controversy over claims
that its star attraction, a
rare portrait attributed
to Paul Gauguin, may be
a fake.
Teuraheimata a Potu-
ru, thought to have been
painted in Tahiti in 1891,
is being exhibited for the
second time, the first
outside the United
States, at the annual
event Fine Arts Paris,
which is being held on-
line this month.
It was brought to France by Jill New-
house, a New York gallery owner who is
trying to sell it for an American family
that has owned it since the 1940s. How-France
Adam Sage ParisGauguin portrait may not
be real deal, art fair warned
ever, Fabrice Fourmanoir, a Gauguin
specialist, has cast doubt on the work’s
authenticity. “In Paul
Gauguin’s memory, we
cannot let this go
through,” he said. “It’s a
painting for tourists.”
His word carries
weight: he persuaded
the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New
York that a painting at-
tributed to Gauguin
was in fact by a French
naval officer who had
been his neighbour on
Tahiti. The same offi-
cer is listed as having
bought Teuraheimata a
Poturu from Gauguin in 1895.
Ms Newhouse said that the work had
been certified as authentic by the re-
spected Wildenstein Plattner Institute.wrote several passionate letters to Ty-
tus Woyciechowski, a fellow student
who lodged with the Chopin family.
“Give me your lips, dearest lover,”
one reads. “I’m convinced you still love
me and I am as scared of you as ever.”
Another, written soon after Chopin
turned 20 in 1830, said: “As always, I
carry your letters around with me. How
it will do me good to take out your letter
and reassure myself that you love me.”
Moritz Weber, an arts journalist at
SRF, the Swiss public broadcaster,
argues that such “homoerotic” pas-
sages of Chopin’s correspondence have
been overlooked by scholars.
“Chopin’s love for men... would con-
stitute a public relations crisis for the
[Polish] government,” Weber wrote.
A spokesman for the Fryderyk Chop-
in Institute in Warsaw said that the
pianist had been using the “musical and
complicated” language of his day.ebyJill New-G c t p w t M Y t w n b T c bPoturufromGau