Maria Branyas Morera from Spain. Photo: X/@MariaBranyas112
The world’s oldest living person, Maria Branyas Morera of Spain, who was born in the United States and survived two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family said Tuesday (August 20, 2024).
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without any pain,” her family wrote on her account on the social network X.
“We will always remember him for his advice and kindness,” he said.
Branas, who has lived at the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the city of Olot in northeastern Spain for the past two decades, warned in a post on Tuesday that she was feeling “weak”.
“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t make me suffer. I will be happy wherever I go,” she wrote on an account run by her family.
Guinness World Records officially acknowledged Branyas as the world’s oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon at the age of 118.
Following Branyas’ death, the oldest living person in the world is Tomiko Itsuka of Japan, who was born on May 23, 1908, and is 116 years old, according to the American Gerontology Research Group.
Branyas, who lived through the 1918 flu, World War I and World War II, and the Spanish Civil War, contracted COVID-19 just weeks after her 113th birthday in 2020 and had to be confined to her room at home, but made a full recovery.
Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genetics”.
“She has never been to the hospital, she has never broken a bone, she is fine, she has no pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023.
‘Totally clear’
Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, after his family moved to the United States from Mexico.
In 1915 the entire family decided to return to their native Spain due to World War I, which complicated the ship journey across the Atlantic.
A tragedy occurred on this sea voyage – at the end of the voyage her father died of tuberculosis, and his coffin was thrown into the sea.
Branyas and his mother settled in Barcelona. In 1931—five years before the start of Spain’s 1936–39 Civil War—she married a doctor.
The couple remained together for four decades, until her husband passed away at the age of 72. They had three children, one of whom has already died, 11 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
Manel Esteller, a member of the team of researchers at the University of Barcelona who studied Branas’s DNA to discover the reasons behind his longevity, told the Spanish daily newspaper ABC in October 2023 that he was surprised by his good health.
“Her mind is completely clear. She remembers events from the age of four very clearly, and she doesn’t have any heart disease, which is common in older people. She only has problems with mobility and hearing. It’s incredible,” the genetics professor said.
The oldest verified person to have ever lived was Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.