Catalonia's Maria Branyas, world's oldest person, turns 117

Catalonia's Maria Branyas, who has been the world's oldest person for more than a year, turned 117 on Monday. 

Born to Catalan parents in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, Maria has been living in the Santa Maria del Tura care home in Olot, northern Catalonia, for more than two decades. 

Family, friends and staff are marking the special occasion there with cake and a small gift, Maria's daughter, Rosa Moret, told the Catalan News Agency (ACN) ahead of the big day. 

"She has been going downhill in recent months," Rosa admits. Since last summer she has noticed "a slow decline," but at the same time, "she doesn't have any illnesses." 

Maria is now two months away from being one of the ten verified longest-living people in history, although her daughter says she views records like that as "nonsense." 

According to the Gerontology Research Group, there are currently eleven people who have lived longer than Branyas, all of them women. Only four people in history have reached the age of 118. 

Branyas became the world's oldest living person on January 17, 2023, when a 118-year-old French nun called Lucile Randon died. 

Rosa says her mother is aware of the fact that there is no one in the world older than her, but that she "shrugs her shoulders" when it's mentioned. "She says that this is not an achievement for her or anyone else." 

Maria has not been hospitalized, Rosa explains, but her vision, hearing and, lately, memory have declined, and she cannot walk unaided. 

Her mental faculties remain intact, and she can still hold a conversation with her family and staff at the care home. 

"She no longer does interviews or anything like that, what she wants is peace of mind," Rosa says. 

Memories of First World War 

Born on March 4, 1907, to a Catalan family in San Francisco, California, Branyas moved to Catalonia as a young child and has memories dating far back to World War I as well as the Spanish Civil War.

When her mother decided to return to Catalonia with her family including 7-year-old Maria, the world was at war. It was 1914, and in an interview with Catalan News in 2019, Branyas still remembered their long journey by ship.

“We came here on a boat. Because of the war, Germany was still attacking the North, and you couldn’t go through the northern seas, but we could go further down, through the Azores and Cuba,” she said. “In 1914 I was already a bit aware [of what was happening],” Branyas adds in a slow, but firm tone.  

Indeed, she recalled both world wars: “They were very harmful in Europe, but they also brought some advances.”

She also had fresh memories of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). “I have very bad memories of it, some people rose up and started to commit atrocities when no one was talking about it.”

Many years later, in May 2020, Branyas became the oldest known person to survive Covid-19 at the age of 113.

Podcast 

Listen to the podcast below to learn more about Maria's life, recorded to mark her 116th birthday last year and revisiting an interview with Maria from 2019.