Maria Branyas Morera dies: The world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas, died at a Spanish nursing facility on Tuesday at the age of 117, according to her official X account. “Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” read a post on her X account, which is managed by her daughter.
After residing in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the northern Spanish town of Olot for the previous 20 years, Branyas announced in a recent post that she was feeling weak on Monday. “I feel helpless. It’s almost time. I don’t like tears, so don’t cry. You already know that I’ll be content wherever I go.”
Additionally, a statement from Guinness World Records (GWR) verified her passing at 117 years and 168 days of age. The GWR statement said that Maria died on Monday and that she “passed away peacefully at the nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, where she had lived for the past 20 years.”
Early life and family
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1907, and after living in Texas and New Orleans, the family returned to their home country, Spain in 1915, amid the First World War making the transatlantic journey more difficult. Tragically, her father’s coffin was buried at sea after he passed away from tuberculosis at the end of the expedition. When Branyas was seven years old, she moved to Catalonia with her mother, where she lived for the rest of her life.
She married Catalan doctor Joan Moret in 1931, and the two had three children , 11 grandkids and numerous great-grandchildren. According to GWR, she outlived her son August, who died in a tractor accident at the age of 86, while her husband passed away in 1976.
Branyas, who lived through the Spanish Civil War, both World Wars, and the 1918 flu epidemic, caught Covid-19 in 2020 shortly after her 113th birthday. She recovered completely even though she was restricted to her room at the nursing home.
Being the oldest person alive!
In January 2023, Branyas surpassed all living people in age and celebrated her 117th birthday on March 4. In addition to wonderful genes, she attributed her extraordinary longevity to living a life of order, tranquillity, good connections with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.
Meanwhile, in an interview with local Catalan television in 2023, Rosa Moret, her youngest daughter, claimed that her mother’s long life was due to heredity, saying, “She has never gone to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine, she has no pain,” according to Reuters.
Branyas was the eighth-oldest confirmed person in history at the age of 117. Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 years and 164 days old, was the oldest person ever documented. As of now, the US Gerontology Research Group lists Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908, at 116 years old, as the oldest living person.
