The world’s oldest living person, Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and the COVID pandemic, has died at the age of 117, her family said Tuesday.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her account on social network X.
“We will always remember her for her advice and kindness,” they said.
Guinness World Records
Branyas, who had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain, had warned in a post on Tuesday that she felt “weak”.
“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me. Wherever I go, I will be happy,” she added in the account that is run by her family.
Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Branyas’s status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon at the age of 118.
In the wake of Branyas’s death, the oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the U.S. Gerontology Research Group.
Branyas got Covid-19 in 2020 just weeks after ringing in her 113th birthday and was confined to her room at the home but made a full recovery.
Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genetics”.
“She has never gone to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine, she has no pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023.
Branyas celebrated her 116th birthday in March 2023 at her residence home Santa Maria del Tura in Olot, Catalonia, Spain, surrounded by friends, fans and her 78-year-old daughter Rosa. Branyas was lucid and spoke fondly about her childhood, said Ben Meyers, CEO of LongeviQuest, a longevity company that unites super longevity researchers worldwide.
Meyers, who was with her at the residence home, said she was touched by greetings from her many fans around the world.
“This warms my heart,” Branyas said.
Born on March 4, 1907, in California, one year after her parents emigrated to the U.S., Branyas spent the first few years of her life in San Francisco, according to Guinness. Eight years later, the family decided to return to Spain, where they settled in Catalonia. She married Joan Moret in 1931, according to Guinness World Records, and had three children, 11 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.
Like most, she had her share of triumphs and tragedies. Among them, losing her father on the voyage from the U.S. to Spain from pulmonary tuberculosis, according to Guinness World Records.
Still, she told her social media followers, “Never, ever, become a bitter person no matter what.”
Cara Tabachnick and
contributed to this report.