Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, the oldest person alive in the world born in the United States, passed away at the age of 117, as confirmed by her family 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.
Branyas lived through two world wars and was officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest living person in January 2023, following the death of French nun Lucile Randon at 118 years old.
Following Branyas’s passing, the title of the oldest living person in the world now belongs to Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, born on May 23, 1908, making her 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group.