Angelina Torres, Spain's oldest person, dies at the age of 112

Angelina Torres - the oldest person in Spain - has died in Barcelona at the age of 112. This was announced by president of the regional government Salvador Illa. "I had the privilege of meeting Angelina Torres last year. A wise woman, full of faith and kindness, a hard worker with great strength," Illa said.

Angelina was the oldest person in the country in the last 14 months of her life. In Spain, her longevity is surpassed by María Branyas, also from Catalonia, who died at the age of 117 in August 2024. Piedad Loriente from Aragon also died last year (in September) at the age of 113.

Following Angelina's death, the oldest person in Spain is Carme Noguera Falguera, 111 years and 81 days old, born in 1914 in Olot (Girona). She will try to break Angelina's and even María's records, which would make her the eight oldest person in history.

According to international platform Longeviquest, which lists the world's oldest people by country, Ethel May Caterham from the UK, 116, is currently the oldest living person in the world and the oldest British person in history. She is also the last surviving person born in the 1900s. She is followed by Marie-Rose Tessier from France and Naomi Whitehead from the US, both 115.

Born on 18 March 1913 in the village of Bellvís (Lleida), Angelina Torres had been living in Barcelona since she was a child. Her home was close to the Sagrada Familia and she saw the monumental church being built practically from the start. She was recently able to visit it for the last time.

The fifth of seven siblings, Angelina was just a child when the family left Lleida to move to Barcelona after her father died. At the age of 15, she began working as an apprentice dressmaker and later worked as a tie maker for the Vehils Vidal tailor's shop, where she earned six pesetas for every 12 ties she made.

After the Civil War she married her boyfriend Josep Martí, with whom she had a daughter, Mercè, who is now 81 years old. Angelina was the grandmother of two children, Xavi and Gemma, and great-grandmother of three children.

In an interview published in September last year, Torres said that she had never suffered from any serious illness, that she never went to the doctor and that she had always been a hard-working woman. "I would like to be remembered as someone who has done everything she could for others, young and old. Always with my arms wide open," she said. Angelina confessed that she would always allow herself a Magnum dark chocolate ice cream at 4pm on summer days and that she never gave up caffeine. She would even add a dash of Bailey's.