By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who holds the Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living person, has died at the age of 117, her family said Tuesday.
Morera, who was born in the United States lived through two world wars.
“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.
She had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain.
On Tuesday, she had warned in a social media 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 in the account which is run by her family.
Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Branyas’s status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon aged 118.
In the wake of Morera’s death, the oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka.
He was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group.
Heritage Times HT reports that the accurate record of the oldest person in the world has been trailed by controversies, as Africa has repeatedly alleged that the search has not been all-inclusive.
Several cities across Africa are dotted with persons believed to have lived nearly 120 years but are barely captured in the record of world oldest persons.
