Salvador Dalí

Question

Hola Inma,I' m a bit confused with the articles. Why not el Salvador Dalí era un pintor? In a lesson of yours I read: El
	Quijote
	fue
	escrito por
	Miguel
	de Cervantes.El
	señor
	López
	era
	muy
	valorado
	por
	todos
	los vecinos.Te agradezco mucho tus respuestas muy útiles!Ελισάβετ

Accepted Answer

Hola Ελισάβετ
Good question! 
For titles like Mr, Mrs, Miss , in Spanish we use the article as explained in this lesson. For proper names, e.g. Inma, María, Carlos.., we don't use the article; this is why we are not using it on the sentence with "Salvador Dalí..." 
Now, sometimes and just for certain works, plays, famous paintings we add the article to the name - I'm not quite sure why because it only applies to some, for example, for "Don Quijote de la Mancha by Cervantes" we use "El Quijote de Cervantes" or for Da Vinci's Gioconda we say "La Gioconda de Da Vinci"; however we wouldn't refer to Shakespeare's Macbeth as "El Macbeth de Shakespeare", we'd probably say "La obra de Macbeth de Shakespeare. 
Un saludo
Inma