Recipients of the Order of Isabella the Catholic

Emilio Sala y Francés (20 January 1850 – 14 April 1910) was a Spanish painter, primarily of female portraits.

María Enriqueta Camarillo (also known as María Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa de Pereyra) (1872–1968) was a Mexican poet-novelist, short story writer and translator. She was widely recognized for her works, with schools and libraries named after her, as well as a bust by Spanish sculptor Mariano Benlliure erected in Hidalgo Park in Mexico City in her honor. She received the 1923 literary prize from the Académie française for her novel El Secreto. She was awarded a collaborative partnership in 1927 with the Real Academia Hispano-Americana de Ciencias y Artes of Cádiz for her textbook Rosas de la Infancia. For the same work, she also received the prize for best children's literature from the Literary Salon of the Universal Exposition in Seville, Spain. Camarillo was granted the Order of Isabella the Catholic in 1947 and in 1948 received the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise.

Johan Martin Ferner (né Johan Martin Jacobsen; 22 July 1927 – 24 January 2015) was a Norwegian sailor and Olympic medalist. He won a silver medal in the 6 metre class with the boat Elisabeth X at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, together with Finn Ferner (his brother), Erik Heiberg, Tor Arneberg and Carl Mortensen. He was married to Princess Astrid, the sister of King Harald V of Norway and Princess Ragnhild.

Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso GCIH (19 September 1930 – 24 June 2008) was a Brazilian anthropologist and a member of the faculty of philosophy, letters and human sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP). She was the wife of 34th president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and First Lady of her country between 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2002. She too was a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of São Paulo.
As professor and researcher Cardoso taught at the Latin American College of Social Sciences (Flacso/Unesco), University of Chile (Santiago), Maison des Sciences de L'Homme (Paris), University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University (New York City). She was an associate member of the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge. With her husband, the sociologist and former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, she founded and later directed the research institute Cebrap (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento – Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning), which continues to be a leading site of social science research in Brazil.Dr. Cardoso's academic reputation rests primarily on a series of highly influential articles and book chapters on popular movements and political participation that she published in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Dr. Cardoso, Cebrap created Brazil's first research group on social movements, helping to legitimate formal academic study of the "new" (non-class) social movements that had emerged in the 1970s. At the same time, she was careful to stress the limits of identity-based and popular movements for political transformation, noting the divisions among them and their frequent dependency on clientelistic relations with the state and political parties.
Unlike many academics, Dr. Cardoso also had the opportunity to put some of her theories into practice after her husband was elected president. She transformed the traditional charity approach of other first ladies with her Comunidade Solidária (Solidary Community) programs that stressed the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in state-society partnerships. In addition to executing concrete social programs, Comunidade Solidária also facilitated broad discussions of important social topics, from agrarian reform to the legal status of NGOs, publishing the results of these dialogues. Anthony Hall of the London School of Economics told the BBC after her death that she was instrumental in developing the plan to bundle various social programs together in the way that has become characteristic of the successful Bolsa Familia social program. She published a book about these experiences, Comunidade Solidaria: Fortalecendo a Sociedade, Promovendo O Desenvolvimento (Comunitas, 2002). She transformed the Comunidade Solidaria into an NGO, Comunitas, after her husband left office.

She died in São Paulo on 24 June 2008, after suffering a cardiac arrest. She had been discharged from the Sírio-Libanês Hospital the previous day, 23 June 2008, having previously been admitted with chest pains.