A world-renowned flamenco dancer who was imprisoned in an Epsom mental hospital for more than 20 years could be set to receive a memorial in the town.

Nearly a century after Félix García - nicknamed Félix the Mad - was imprisoned in Horton Asylum, his biographer Antonio Hernández is lobbying Epsom officials to have a monument installed.

Your Local Guardian:

Picasso sketched Felix el Loco dancing with Nemtchinova during rehearsals in 1919

There is already an anonymous monument to the patients who stayed there but Mr Hernández believes García should have his own, not least because he believes the dancer was wrongly imprisoned.

Mr Hernández said: "The circumstances of his detention were very sad. I do not believe he was ill, but we have no way of knowing for sure because there aren’t many records of his life.

"He didn’t speak very good English when he was first imprisoned so it must have been a very hard, very lonely time for him, until he passed away after 20 years.

"He was so talented I feel he deserves a monument.

"I want it to read: ‘In this nameless grave is buried Spanish musician and dancer, Félix García’."

García collaborated with Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev and artist Pablo Picasso on an avant-garde ballet, the Three-Cornered Hat, which premiered in London’s Alhambra Theatre in 1919.

The official story is that Felix lost his mind when he discovered from posters that he would no longer be dancing the lead role and he fled to St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square.

He was reportedly found dancing naked on the altar at night and arrested. Felix was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to Long Grove Hospital, where he died two decades later in 1941.

But Mr Hernández - whose book on García will come out on the centenary of his arrest - says he has reason to believe he was falsely incarcerated.

During his trip to the UK, which has seen him visit the National Archives, the British Museum and Ewell’s Bourne Hall, he offered some interesting theories into García’s demise.

The 50-year-old said: "Some believe that Félix paid a high price for what he knew of Diaghilev’s private life back in Spain.

"Diaghilev was a very prominent homosexual at the time and he held a lot of influence with important people, like the royal family.

It was even reported at the time that García had died in 1919, when in actual fact he lived in Horton Asylum until his death in 1941.

Violin prodigy Josef Hassid, notorious criminal twin Ronnie Kray and Titanic survivor George Pelham were also once patients at Long Grove Hospital, which closed in 1992. Both Hassid and Pelham died there.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered, Mr Hernández says, and he’s also petitioning to have his nickname removed, since he believes García’s association with mental illness to be inaccurate.

And finally, he is working on gaining credit for his choreography on the Three-Cornered Hat, whose main dance pieces he wrote, records indicate.

David Brooks, museum assistant at Bourne Hall in Ewell, questioned whether Leonide Massine, who worked on the Three-Cornered Hat and was the one who played the lead part in it, consolidated his reputation as Europe’s leading choreographer on the back of Félix’s work.

Mr Brooks said: "There are many unanswered questions to his story. Was he really insane or was that what people were led to believe? Why did Diaghilev declare him dead in Spain?"

The Epsom Guardian is running a campaign to get dignity for the thousands of people who died in the hospital cluster and lie in unmarked graves in the abandoned Horton Cemetery where human remains surfaced in 2012.

Anyone with information about the hospital and Félix García should email Mr Hernandez atantonioparamus@yahoo.es