Carmina Useros

Carmina Useros Cortés (24 February 1928 – 23 March 2017) was a Spanish writer, ceramist, painter, and cultural manager. A researcher of the gastronomic, artisan, and cultural traditions of Albacete, she was one of the first women gastronomes in Spain.

She was president and director of the , a member of the , a founding member of the Castilian-Manchego Gastronomy Academy, She drew on these experiences to write publications such as the 1971 cookbook Mil recetas de Albacete y su provincia (A Thousand Recipes of Albacete and its Province) and 1973's En busca de la Artesanía de Albacete (In Search of the Crafts of Albacete). The couple later expanded their travels throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the Bealearic and Canary archipelagos. The materials that made up the Belmonte-Useros collection would be the foundation of a museum of clay crafts, the in Chinchilla de Montearagón, an enclave in which clay had been worked since the Neolithic. In 1970 they restored the Agujero de Chinchilla Caves, making them an art gallery.

Awards and distinctions In 2002, Carmina Useros received the Albacetian of the Year award from the President of Castilla–La Mancha, José Bono.

The novelist and gastronome Manuel Vázquez Montalbán mentions her in his novel La Rosa de Alejandría as "the excellent Carmina Useros".