San Francisco commends Catalan Maria Branyas, world's oldest person alive

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has officially commended Catalan Maria Branyas, the world's oldest known living person, aged 116 years and 249 days. 

Branyas has been living in a nursing home in Olot since 2000, when she was transferred after contracting pneumonia. There, she thrives as "an active and engaged resident, continuing to perform exercises until her deteriorated mobility," the text reads. 

The resolution read by the speaker of the board, Aaron Peskin, on Tuesday also declares November 7, 2023 as 'Maria Branyas Day' in the city and local county.

The text also praises all that the Catalan woman "has to teach at this critical moment in our planet's history on how to live with integrity, love, humanity, and hope."

At her age, Branyas "continues to inspire the world with her longevity, perseverance, good humor, quick wit, vast institutional knowledge, verve and deep wisdom earned from a life well-lived," the text reads. 

Branyas, born on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco, California, is the daughter of an expatriate Catalan family who moved to the American city a year earlier. The family was looking for economic opportunities, so following San Francisco's earthquake and fire of 1906, the family quickly moved on to New Orleans before returning to Spain in 1915. 

Listen to our Filling the Sink podcast episode to learn more about the world's oldest person.

During her boat trip back to Spain, the ship had to be rerouted to ensure safe passage because of the German naval presence in the Atlantic Ocean during World War I. At the time, her father passed away from tuberculosis, and Branyas lost her hearing in one ear after falling from the upper deck to the lower deck while playing with her brothers. She now uses a voice-to-text platform to communicate due to hearing loss. 

Once docked in Spain, her family first settled in Barcelona and later moved northeast to Banyoles. 

Nurse, traveler and grandmother of 11

In July 1931, Maria Branyas married Joan Moret, a traumatologist, and had three children: August, Maria Teresa, and Rosa. 

During the Spanish Civil War, Maria Branyas worked by her husband's side as a nurse at a Nationalist Field Hospital in Trujillo, Extremadura. She later worked as her husband's assistant when he became the director of Girona's Hospital Josep until he passed away in 1976. 

Throughout the 1990s, Branyas traveled to Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands and England. One of the things the text highlights is that she took up "hobbies such as sewing, music, and reading." 

One of her other hobbies was playing the piano, which she continued to do until she was 108 years old. 

Branyas has 11 grandchildren and has already outlived her eldest son, August, who died in a tractor accident at the age of 86. In 2007, the Catalan woman became a centenarian and a supercentenarian ten years later. 

Covid-19 and better medical experience

Maria Branyas was also the oldest person to contract and recover from Covid-19 in March 2020 and used the experience to call for better medical and social treatment. 

"This pandemic has revealed that older people are the forgotten ones of our society," Branyas told The Observer.

"Older people have fought their whole lives, sacrificed time and their dreams for today's quality of life, they did not deserve to leave the world in this way," she added in reference to many doctors prioritizing younger patients.

In July 2020, Spain's national research council dubbed the 'Project Branyas' to study the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on elderly care home residents. 

Branyas has continued to intrigue the scientific and medical communities, which have made her the ongoing subject of scientific research for her good health and memory, despite her advanced age. 

Oldest living person

On January 17, 2023, Branyas officially became the oldest living person in the world after the death of French Lucile Randon and became the oldest person to have ever resided in Spain on April 21, 2023.

When asked about the secret to her long life, Maria Branyas credits an intentional life of "order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people."

Responding to a questionnaire sent by Catalan News ahead of her 116th birthday, she said: "Longevity is all about good luck and good genetics."

A good diet and healthy quality of life, along with a good relationship with one's family and friends, are also some of her secrets to reaching old age. 

She said she was surprised at all the media attention and believed "it was not that important."

To mark the day, Branyas also tweeted an extract of a poem by Czech writer and 1984 Nobel Literature Prize Jaroslav Seifert.

"Not till old age did I learn to love silence. Sometimes, it is more exciting than music. In the silence emerge tremulous signals, and at the crossroads of memory, you hear names which time had tried to stifle," she tweeted while pointing out that it was her 116th birthday. 

Documentary 

Maria Branyas will soon feature in a documentary taking a look at the planet's oldest humans.  

American filmmaker Sam Green, who promoted the resolution in San Francisco, is undertaking an ambitious project where he intends to interview the oldest people in the world for the rest of his life, "but every once in a while, I'll make a film and put it out," he told Catalan News. As the holder of the title changes frequently, it will be an "ever-expanding film," according to Green.

Green recently met Maria Branyas for the project and was struck by how "sharp" the woman born in 1907 still is. "She's like a teenager in the world of the oldest people in the world," the documentary maker joked, saying that 116 is relatively young to hold that title before adding: "or middle-aged, maybe."