Key Points
- The world’s oldest person has died at the age of 117.
- Maria Branyas Morera lived through two world wars: the Spanish Civil War and the COVID-19 pandemic.
- After her death, the oldest living person is Japanese Tomiko Itooka.
The world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera of Spain, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, died Tuesday at the age of 117, her family announced.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her account on the social network X.
“We will always remember her for her advice and her kindness.”
in January 2023, after the death of French nun Lucile Randon at the age of 118.
Branyas, who has lived in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the Catalan city of Olot for the past two decades, warned in a message on Monday 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 on the account, which is run by her family.
The supercentenarian, who survived the 1918 Spanish flu, World Wars I and II, and the Spanish Civil War, contracted COVID-19 in 2020 just weeks after her 113th birthday but made a full recovery.
After Branyas’ death, the oldest living person in the world is Japanese Tomiko Itooka. She was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the American Gerontology Research Group.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, the 10 oldest people in the world are all women. Source: SBS News
Branyas remembered as ‘grandmother of Catalonia’
Branyas’ youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genetics.”
“She has never been to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine and she is not in pain,” she told regional Catalan television in 2023.
The leader of Catalonia’s regional government, former Health Minister Salvador Illa, expressed his “sincere condolences” to Branyas’ family in a message on X.
“We have lost a charming woman who taught us the value of life and the wisdom of the years,” he said, calling her “the grandmother of Catalonia”.
Branyas was born on March 4, 1907, in San Francisco, shortly after her family moved to the United States from Mexico.
In 1915 the family decided to return to their native Spain. It was an Atlantic journey, but it was complicated by the First World War that had started the year before.
The crossing was also marked by tragedy: her father died of tuberculosis at the end of the journey and his coffin was thrown into the sea.
‘All I did was live’
Branyas and her mother settled in Barcelona, where she married a doctor in 1931, five years before the start of the Spanish Civil War.
The couple lived together for forty years, until her husband died at the age of 72. She had three children, one of whom has already passed away, eleven grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
“I haven’t done anything special, the only thing I’ve done is live,” Branyas told Catalan daily La Vanguardia in 2019.
Manel Esteller, one of the researchers from the University of Barcelona who examined Branyas’ DNA, told Spanish daily ABC last year that he was surprised by her good health.
“Her mind is completely clear. She remembers episodes from when she was only four years old with impressive clarity, and she has no cardiovascular disease, which is common in the elderly. The only things she has are mobility and hearing problems. It’s incredible,” he said.
The oldest verified person to have ever lived was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment. She died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
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