The world’s oldest living person, Spanish retiree Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and survived a plague epidemic and two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family announced.

“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she had wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on their account on X. “We will always remember her for her advice and kindness,” they said.

Branyas spent her last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain and celebrated her 117th birthday there in March.

Experts had admired her mental and physical health, but in a heartbreaking final message to her social media followers on Tuesday, she warned that she was feeling “weak.”

“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me,” she said on the account run by her family. “Wherever I go, I will be happy.”

Guinness World Records officially recognized Branyas as the world’s oldest person in January 2023, after French nun Lucile Randon died at the age of 118.

Following Branyas’ death, Tomiko Itooka of Japan is the oldest living person in the world. Born on May 23, 1908, she is 116 years old, according to the U.S. Gerontology Research Group, which verifies claims of people who are 110 years old or older.

The title of the oldest person of all time belongs to Jeanne Louise Calment, whose life spanned 122 years and 164 days according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Branyas was born in San Francisco in 1907, when the city was suffering from a second wave of the bubonic plague.

Her family decided to return to Spain in 1915 during the First World War after her father Josep fell ill.

He eventually died of tuberculosis on the ship they were crossing the Atlantic. His daughter, now 100 years old, injured herself in a fall during the same voyage and later discovered that she had lost her hearing in one ear.

It survived two world wars, the Spanish flu, the Spanish Civil War and most recently Covid-19.

In 1931, at the age of 23, she married the Catalan doctor Joan Moret. Her husband died over 46 years ago at the age of 71.

On the occasion of his anniversary, she wrote that she would “always carry him in her heart, every day.”

She has three children, eleven grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren and attributes her old age to “order, peace” and “staying away from harmful people”.

A stress-free life is most important to her and she has lived in an assisted living facility in the Catalan city of Olot since she was 92 years old.

She played the piano, read newspapers and exercised every morning until she was 105 years old.

Unusually for her age, Ms Morera was an active user of the social network X (formerly Twitter), regularly updating her more than 16,000 followers on her health and well-being.

Her X-Account is called “Super Catalan Grandma” and has the description: “I am old, very old, but not an idiot.”

Branyas survived a health scare when she tested positive for Covid-19 during the global pandemic in 2020, just weeks after her 113th birthday.

Fortunately, she avoided the development of the severe symptoms that cost millions of lives, and recovered within a few days.

This made her the oldest Covid-19 survivor in the world at the time – but this record was broken later that same year by Sister André.

Branyas’ nursing home told the Guinness Book of Records at the time that it would hold a “small celebration behind closed doors” to commemorate the achievement.

In December 2022, Branyas gave nutritional advice to her legion of followers, extolling the health benefits of a particular food.

On X she wrote: “And one more piece of advice, if you’ll allow me: in a time when new diets and miracle foods for well-being and health are constantly appearing on the market, it is necessary to save yogurt, a lifelong food with infinite beneficial properties for the body.”

Yoghurt is a good source of calcium and protein, which is good for bone and muscle health according to the NHS. However, there is no evidence that eating yoghurt will help you live longer.

Branyas celebrated her 117th birthday in March with a cake and posted on the occasion: “Good morning, world. Today I turn 117 years old. I have come so far.”

Towards the end of her life, Branyas agreed to be examined by scientists who hoped to learn more about the secrets of longevity.

They collected samples of her saliva, blood and urine to compare with those of their daughter, who is over 80 years old, hoping the results could help in the development of drugs to treat age-related diseases.

Scientist Manel Esteller told Spanish news channel ABC at the time: “She has a completely clear head.”

“She remembers events from when she was only four years old with impressive clarity and she has no history of cardiovascular disease, which is common in older people.”

“It’s clear there’s a genetic component because there are several members of her family who are over 90 years old.”

Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, also once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genes.”

“She has never been to hospital, she has never broken a bone, she is fine, she is not in pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023.

Reacting to the news of her death, the head of the Catalan regional government and former health minister Salvador Illa expressed his “deepest condolences” to Branyas’ family in a message published on X.

“We are losing a lovely woman who taught us the value of life and the wisdom of the years,” he said, calling her “Catalonia’s grandmother.”

In the days before her death, Branyas’ family said: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end.”

“Death will find me exhausted because I have experienced so much, but I want to meet it with a smile and feel free and content.”