Maria Branyas Morera (4 March 1907 – 19 August 2024 ), a Spanish woman born in America who was recognized as the oldest person in the world at 117 years old, has passed away, according to her family. Guinness World Records has also confirmed her passing at 117 years and 168 days old, making her the eighth-oldest person with a proven age in history.
In a post on Branyas' X account, her family expressed in Catalan: “Maria Branyas has passed away. She passed away as she desired: peacefully, painlessly, in her sleep”.
She was born on March 4, 1907, just under four years after the Wright Brothers' first power-driven flight and two years before the start of construction on the doomed Titanic.
Morera was born one year after her parents moved to the U.S. from Spain. Eight years later, the family returned and settled in Barcelona during World War I. Morera also experienced both the Spanish Civil War and World War II in his lifetime.
During the final years of her life, she resided in a nursing home in Catalonia. Despite her age, Morera continued to use X to communicate with her numerous followers, with the assistance of her daughter.
Her social media bio states that she is old, extremely old, but not unintelligent.
It is thought that Morera is one of the oldest individuals who have successfully overcome COVID-19 after being diagnosed with the virus in May 2020.
She informed Guinness that her longevity was attributed to "order, calmness, strong relationships with family and friends, time spent in nature, emotional balance, lack of worries or regrets, abundance of positivity, and avoiding negative individuals."
The Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people thought to be 110 or older, listed Branyas as the oldest known person in the world after the death of French nun Lucile Randon last year.
The next oldest person listed by the Gerontology Research Group is Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who is 116 years old. According to the Gerontology Research Group, a scientific nonprofit that validates the ages of people aged at least 110, the oldest living person is now a 116-year-old Japanese woman named Tomiko Itooka.
