The world’s oldest person, Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera, who was born in the United States and lived through two world wars, died Tuesday at the age of 117, her family said. Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged Branyas’s status as the world’s oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon aged 118. “Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her account on social network X. “We will always remember her for her advice and her kindness.”

Branyas, who had lived for the last two decades in the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in the town of Olot in the northeastern region of Catalonia, had warned in a post 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. In the wake of Branyas’ death, the oldest living person in the world is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908 and is 116 years old, according to the US-based Gerontology Research Group. Branyas, who lived through the 1918 flu, World War I and World War II and Spain’s civil war, got Covid-19 in 2020 just weeks after ringing in her 113th birthday but made a full recovery.

‘Endearing woman’

Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, once attributed her mother’s longevity to “genetics”. “She has never gone to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine, she has no pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023. The head of the regional government of Catalonia, former health minister Salvador Illa, expressed his “heartfelt condolences” to Branyas’ family in a message posted on X. “We lose an endearing woman, who has taught us the value of life and the wisdom of the years,” he said, calling her “Catalonia’s grandmother”.

Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907 shortly after her family moved to the United States from Mexico. The entire family decided to return to their native Spain in 1915 as World War I was under way, which complicated the ship voyage across the Atlantic. The crossing was also marked by tragedy — her father died from tuberculosis towards the end of the voyage, and his coffin was put into the sea.

‘Completely lucid’

Branyas and her mother settled in Barcelona and in 1931 - five years before the start of Spain’s 1936-39 civil war - she married a doctor. The couple lived together for four decades until her husband died aged 72. She had three children, including one who has already died, 11 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

“I haven’t done anything extraordinary, the only thing I did was live,” Branyas told Catalan daily newspaper La Vanguardia in 2019. Manel Esteller, part of a team of researchers from the University of Barcelona who studied Branyas’ DNA to determine the source of her longevity told daily Spanish newspaper ABC in October 2023 he was surprised by her good health.

“Her mind is completely lucid. She remembers with impressive clarity episodes from when she was only four years old, 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,” the genetics professor said. The oldest verified person to have ever lived was Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days old. — AFP