THE world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, from Spain, has died at the age of 117, her family disclosed on Tuesday, August 20.

“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her X account.

“We will always remember her for her advice and her kindness,” the family added.

The World Guinness Record also confirmed Branyas’ passing on Tuesday in a post, stating “Guinness World Records is saddened to learn that the world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera (USA/Spain), passed away yesterday, 19 August. Her death was confirmed by the Gerontology Research Group.

Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco, after her family moved to the United States from Mexico.

She lived for 117 years and 168 days and lived through two world wars, the First and Second World Wars and Spain’s civil war.

She also lived through the 1918 flu. In 2020, she caught Covid a few weeks after her 113th birthday.

Her long life, according to her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, is attributed to ‘genetics’.

“She has never gone to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine, she has no pain,” Moret had said.

In January 2023, she was acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest person after the death of French nun Lucile Randon, aged 118.

Following Branyas’s passing, the next oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who is 116 years old. Itooka was born on May 23, 1908.

The oldest verified person to have ever lived was Jeanne Louise Calment, a Frenchwoman who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.