100 drawings and watercolors for The Arabian Nights (1964). Politics and personality Politics and religion As a youth, Dalí identified as communist, anti-monarchist and anti-clerical, and in 1924 he was briefly imprisoned by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a person "intensely liable to cause public disorder". When Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in 1929 his political activism initially intensified. In 1931, he became involved in the Workers' and Peasants' Front, delivering lectures at meetings and contributing to their party journal. However, as political divisions within the Surrealist group grew, Dalí soon developed a more apolitical stance, refusing to publicly denounce fascism. In 1934, André Breton accused him of being sympathetic to Hitler and Dalí narrowly avoided being expelled from the group. In 1935 Dalí wrote a letter to Breton suggesting that non-white races should be enslaved. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic. However, immediately after Franco's victory in 1939, Dalí praised Catholicism and the Falange and was expelled from the Surrealist group. After Dalí's return to his native Catalonia in 1948, he publicly supported Franco's regime and announced his return to the Catholic faith. Dalí was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1949 and with Pope John XXIII in 1959. He had official meetings with General Franco in June 1956, October 1968, and May 1974. In 1968, Dalí stated that on Franco's death there should be no return to democracy and Spain should become an absolute monarchy. In September 1975, Dalí publicly supported Franco's decision to execute three alleged Basque terrorists and repeated his support for an absolute monarchy, adding: "Personally, I'm against freedom; I'm for the Holy Inquisition." In the following days, he fled to New York after his home in Port Lligat was stoned and he had received numerous death threats. When King Juan Carlos visited the ailing Dalí in August 1981, Dalí told him: "I have always been an anarchist and a monarchist." Dalí espoused a mystical view of Catholicism and in his later years he claimed to be a Catholic and an agnostic. He was interested in the writings of the Jesuit priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin and his Omega Point theory. Dalí's painting Tuna Fishing (Homage to Meissonier) (1967) was inspired by his reading of Chardin. Sexuality Dalí's sexuality had a profound influence on his