The world’s oldest person, 117-year-old Maria Branyas from Spain, has died.
Branyas lived through two world wars and numerous events of historical importance.
The spritely old lady died in a Spanish nursing home.
A spokesperson for the nursing home and Branyas’ official social media account said on Tuesday that she had passed away in her sleep.
The Guinness World Records had declared her the oldest living person in January 2023.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She has died as she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her social media account, managed by her daughter, announced.
Her bio on X, formerly known as Twitter, reads “I am old, very old, but I’m not an idiot.”
According to Al Jazeera news, Branyas had surmised that she was at the end of her life earlier this week, stating in a social media post that “I feel weak. The time is coming. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears….You know me, wherever I go, I will be happy.”
Born in San Francisco, California, on March 4, 1907, Branyas moved with her family to the Spanish region of Catalonia when she was seven years old.
She spent the rest of her life there, living through the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the country’s bloody civil war from 1936-1939, both the world wars, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.