World’s oldest person dies in Spain at 117: Family
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Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera was born in the United States in 1907 and lived through two world wars.
PHOTO: MARIABRANYAS112/X
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MADRID - The world’s oldest living person, Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family said on Aug 20.
“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.
Madam Branyas, who had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in north-eastern Spain, had warned in a post earlier that day 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 in the account, which is run by her family.
Madam Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907. Her family returned to their native Spain in 1915 as World War I was under way.
In 1931, she married a doctor, and the couple lived together for four decades until her husband died at the age of 72.
She had three children, 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, according to an AFP report in January 2023.
“I haven’t done anything extraordinary, the only thing I did was live,” she said, during a 2019 interview with Barcelona-based daily newspaper La Vanguardia.
Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Madam Branyas’ status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023
In the wake of Madam Branyas’ death, the oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group. AFP
