Catalonia's oldest woman turns 112: 'When I was little, there was only one man with a car in Olot'

The oldest woman in Catalonia, Carme Noguera, celebrated her 112th birthday over the weekend.

She was born on August 22, 1914, in Olot, during the earliest stages of the First World War.

More than a century later, she still remembers "there was only one man with a car" in her home city when she was young. The most common means of transport at the time was a horse-drawn carriage.

At the age of 19, she became part of the first class of the Nursing School of the Republican Catalan Government and was a nurse during the Civil War.

Nine decades later, there are only 70 people on the planet older than her, according to the specialized portal LongeviQuest.

In April 1914, the Commonwealth of Catalonia (la Mancomunitat de Catalunya) was established, the first embryo of modern Catalan self-government since 1714. In June of that year, the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, kicking off the First World War. It is these politican contexts that Carme Noguera was born that same summer.

A century later, in an interview with ACN, she asks to be tutored. "You don't make me feel old like that," she quips, taking irony at the fact that she has reached such an advanced age.

"I've been doing, eating, sleeping and working like everyone else," she says, explaining her longevity.

Speaking to the Catalan News Agency from her home in Taradell, where she lives with her daughter, Noguera recalls the first years of her life that the streets of Olot were mostly filled with carts.

The telephone had not yet reached the houses and, at the same time, she says that "no one had a radio."

Until the age of 105, she made lunch, supported herself and studied English and French every day. Until a few months ago, she still sang in a choir.

Nurse during Civil War

In 1933, at the age of 19, she moved to Barcelona to be part of the first class of the School of Nursing of the Catalan Government, studying at Hospital Clínic.

On July 19, 1936, she planned to go to the medical centre for a day's studying, but the Spanish Civil War had just broken out that morning and she was unable to go.

She went the next day, where she found "many wounded" people from the opening stages of the conflict in the city.

A man, he says, came to the centre that day wounded by a bullet that "went through a mattress" that was supposed to protect him.

During the conflict, a soldier accompanied the medical workers from the residence where they lived to the hospital every day, which "took a long time."

She also says they never lacked food during those years since food was free, as the Catalan government supported them.

Noguera recalls bringing a suitcase full of potatoes from Barcelona to her parents in Olot, who had gone through food shortages.