Branyas was listed by the Gerontology Research Group as the oldest known person in the world after the death of French nun Lucile Randon last year.
The world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, has died at the age of 117.
In a post on Branyas’ X account, her family wrote in Catalan: “Maria Branyas has left us. She has gone the way she wanted: in her sleep, at peace, and without pain.”
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.
Branyas was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, shortly after her family moved to the US from Spain.
After living for some years in New Orleans, where her father founded a magazine, her family returned to Spain when she was young.
Branyas said that she had memories of crossing the Atlantic Ocean during World War I. Her X username was “Super Catalan Grandma” and her account bears the description: “I am old, very old, but not an idiot.”
At age 113, Branyas tested positive for COVID-19 during the global pandemic, but avoided the severe symptoms that claimed tens of thousands of older Spaniards’ lives.
At the time of her death, she was living in a nursing home in the Catalan town of Olot.
Her family wrote that Branyas told them days before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want to meet it with a smile, feeling free and satisfied.”
Her death means the oldest living person listed by the Gerontology Research Group is now Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, who is 116 years old.
Jeanne Louise Calment, a Frenchwoman who passed away in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days, is still regarded as the oldest known person to have ever lived, according to known records.
