Catalan Maria Branyas, oldest in world, becomes eighth longest-lived person in history

The oldest person in the world, the Catalan Maria Branyas, has become the eighth longest-lived person in history, according to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which supervises the Guinness Oldest People list.

Branyas, born in 1907 in San Francisco to a Catalan family, is 117 years and 138 days old, surpassing the Italian Emma Morano, who passed away in 2017. She is now also the reported third longest-lived European. 

French Jeanne Calmet leads the European and global rankings as she passed away, aged 122 and 164 days old.

Only seven more people have lived longer than Branyas, who has been living in the nursing home Santa Maria del Tura in the northern Catalan municipality of Olot for the last two decades. Three of them passed away between the ages of 117 and 118, three more aged 119, and Calment is the only person to surpass 120 years. She lived between 1875 and 1997.

In May, Branyas entered the top 10 of longest-lived people in history. She became the oldest person on earth on January 17, 2023, when French Luciple Randon passed away, aged 118. And in 2019, she was Catalonia's oldest person.

Family, friends and staff made the special occasion at the nursing home 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."

San Francisco commended Banyas in November last year.

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.