The Spaniard Maria Branyas Morera. Photo: X/@MariaBranyas112

The world’s oldest living person, Spaniard Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, has died at the age of 117, her family said on Tuesday (August 20, 2024).

“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on their account on the social network X.

“We will always remember her for her advice and kindness,” they said.

Branyas, who had lived in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Spain for the past two decades, 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 on the account run by her family.

Guinness World Records officially recognized Branyas as the world’s oldest person in January 2023, after French nun Lucile Randon died at the age of 118.

Following Branyas’ death, Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka is the oldest living person in the world. She was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the US Gerontology Research Group.

Branyas, who had lived through the 1918 flu, World War I and II, and the Spanish Civil War, contracted Covid-19 in 2020, just weeks after her 113th birthday, and was confined to her room in the home, but made a full recovery.

Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genetics.”

“She has never been to hospital, she has never broken a bone, she is fine, she is not in pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023.

“Absolutely clear”

Branyas was born on March 4, 1907, in San Francisco, shortly after her family moved to the United States from Mexico.

In 1915, the entire family decided to return to their homeland of Spain because World War I was raging there, making the journey across the Atlantic difficult.

The crossing was also marked by tragedy: her father died of tuberculosis towards the end of the journey and his coffin was thrown into the sea.

Branyas and her mother settled in Barcelona. In 1931 – five years before the start of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 – she married a doctor.

The couple lived together for four decades until her husband died at the age of 72. She had three children, one of whom is now deceased, as well as eleven grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

Manel Esteller, part of a team of researchers at the University of Barcelona who studied Branyas’ DNA to find out the causes of her longevity, told Spanish daily ABC in October 2023 that he was surprised by her good health.

“Her mind is completely clear. She remembers episodes from her age of four with impressive clarity and she has no cardiovascular disease, which is common in older people. She just has mobility and hearing problems. It’s incredible,” said the genetics professor.

The oldest documented person was the Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.