The world's oldest person, María Branyas Morera, a Spaniard born in the United States in 1907 and who survived two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family announced Tuesday.
“Maria Branyas has passed away. She passed away peacefully and painlessly, as she wished, in her sleep,” her family wrote on Tuesday on her account on the social network X. “We will always remember her advice and her kindness.”
In his post, Ms Branyas, who has lived at the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the northeastern Spanish city of Olot for the past 20 years, said she felt “weak”.
“The time is approaching. Don't cry, I don't like tears. And above all, don't suffer because of me. I am happy wherever I go,” she said in a post on her account, which is run by her family.
Guinness World Records had officially recognized Branyas as the world's oldest person in January 2023, after French nun Lucile Landon died at age 118. According to the American Gerontology Research Group, the oldest person currently living is Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908, at 116 years old.
Branyas, who survived the 1918 Spanish Flu, World War I, World War II and the Spanish Civil War, contracted COVID-19 in 2020, just a few weeks after his 113th birthday. He was confined to his room in a facility but made a full recovery.
Her youngest daughter, Rosa Mollet, once said her mother's longevity was genetic: “She has never been to the hospital, she has never broken a bone, she is healthy and she is not in pain,” Mollet told Catalan television in 2023.
Branyas once told the Guinness World Records website that he believes the secret to his longevity is “order, peace, good relationships with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries or regrets, lots of positivity and avoiding toxic people.”
“I think longevity is partly down to luck,” said Branyas, who uses a voice input device to express himself in his later years.
She was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, shortly after her family emigrated to the United States from Mexico. After spending time in Texas and New Orleans, the whole family returned to their native Spain in 1915, but the ongoing First World War made the voyage across the Atlantic difficult.
The voyage was marked by tragedy: towards the end of the voyage, her father died of tuberculosis and his coffin was thrown overboard.
Branyas and her mother settled in Barcelona. In 1931, five years before the start of Spain's 1936-1939 civil war, she married a doctor. The couple remained together for 40 years, until her husband's death at age 72. They had three children (one of whom preceded her in death), 11 grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren.
Manel Esteller, part of a research team from the University of Barcelona who studied Branyas' DNA to determine the cause of her longevity, told Spanish daily ABC in October 2023 that he was surprised by her good health.
“Her mind is completely clear, she has an astonishingly vivid memory of events that occurred when she was just four years old and she does not have the cardiovascular problems that are common in older people. Her only problems are motor and hearing problems. It's incredible,” the genetics professor said.
The oldest confirmed person to date is Jeanne Louise Calment, a French woman who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
