“She never went to the hospital”
In January 2023, Maria Branyas was recognized as the oldest person in the world by Guinness World Records.
Madrid:
The world’s oldest person, Spaniard Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, died on Tuesday at the age of 117, her family said.
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.
“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.”
La Maria Branyas is finished. Ha mort com ella volia: Mine sleeps, I feel peace and pain.
Fa us this ens deia:
“Un dia me n’aniré d’aquí. No Tornaré a provar café, no menjar yoghurt, no a caronar a la Fada…, deixaré també els meus Records, les meves reflections… 👇– Super Àvia Catalana (@MariaBranyas112) 20 August 2024
Branyas, who had lived in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in northeastern Catalonia for the past two decades, warned in a post on Monday that she felt “weak.”
“I quan la meva veu calli amb la mort, el meu cor et seguirà parlant d’amor” (Tagore).
I feel feverish. S’acosta l’hora. No ploreu, no m’agraden les llàgrimes. I have no patience per mile. When I started making everyone happy, we all came into contact with me only once.– Super Àvia Catalana (@MariaBranyas112) 19 August 2024
“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.
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, but made a full recovery.
“Lovely woman”
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.
The head of the Catalan regional government, former Health Minister Salvador Illa, expressed his “deepest condolences” to Branyas’ family in a message published on X.
When I met Maria Branyas, she was traveling to Catalonia and was the tallest person in the world. Perdem una dona entranyable, que ens ha ensenyat the valiant of the vida i la saviesa dels anys.
I have expressed my condolences to my family. EPD https://t.co/lnPY1jMpBl
— Salvador Illa Roca (@salvadorilla) 20 August 2024
“We are losing a lovely woman who taught us the value of life and the wisdom of the years,” he said, calling her “Catalonia’s grandmother.”
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.
“Absolutely clear”
Branyas and her mother settled in Barcelona and 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.
“I didn’t do anything extraordinary, the only thing I did was live,” Branyas told the Catalan daily La Vanguardia in 2019.
Manel Esteller, part of a team of researchers at the University of Barcelona who studied Branyas’ DNA to find out the reason for 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 fourth year with impressive clarity and she has no cardiovascular disease, which is common in older people. She just has problems with mobility and hearing. 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.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
