Maria Branyas Morera, recognized as the world’s oldest living person, has passed away at the age of 117.
Born in the United States, she lived through two world wars and spent her later years in Spain. Her family announced her death on Tuesday.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her account on social network X.
“We will always remember her for her advice and her kindness,” they said.
Branyas, who had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain, had warned in a post on Tuesday that she felt “weak”.
“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me. Wherever I go, I will be happy,” she added to the account which is run by her family.
Guinness World Records officially recognized Maria Branyas Morera as the world’s oldest living person in January 2023, following the death of French nun Lucile Randon, who was 118 years old.
With Branyas’s passing, the title of the oldest living person now belongs to Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908, and is currently 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group.
