Maria Branyas, who became the world’s oldest living person last year, has died peacefully after living 117 years and 51 days, in the Spanish nursing home where she lived, according to her account on the X platform.
A spokesperson at the Residència Santa María del Tura nursing home in Olot, Catalonia, confirmed this on Tuesday.
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1907, she moved with her Spanish family back to the northeastern region of Catalonia when she was seven. She spent the rest of her life there, and in 1931, she married Catalan doctor Joan Moret, with whom she had three children. Her husband passed away in 1976 and she also outlived her son, August, who died in a tractor accident at the age of 86, Guinness World Records said on its website.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She has died as she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her official X account said, which is handled by her daughter.
Branyas’ account had suggested that her death was imminent on Monday, saying: “I feel weak. The time is coming. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears… You know me, wherever I go, I will be happy.”
Branyas lived through the 1936-39 Civil War, in addition to living through two pandemics that were a century apart, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, of which she said she had “very bad memories”. She successfully fought off COVID-19, contracting the virus shortly after her 113th birthday in 2020, and fully recovering within days to become the world’s oldest COVID-19 survivor. Her record was broken later in the year by Lucile Randon, who was three years Maria’s senior, Guiness says.
She took the title of oldest living woman after the death of Lucile Randon aka Sister André (February 11, 1904– January 17, 2023) of France, who reached 118 years 340 days.
Branyas allowed scientists to study her exceptional lifespan, which she attributed to luck, good genes and “order, tranquillity, good connections with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people,” according to Guinness.
When she reached 117 on March 4, Branyas was the 12th oldest verified person in history. The oldest ever was Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who lived to the age of 122 years and 164 days.
