A life full of changes and adaptations
Maria Branyas celebrated her 117th birthday yesterday, thus becoming the oldest person in the world. She was born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, the daughter of Catalans who had emigrated to the United States. For more than twenty years, she has lived in the Santa Maria del Tura d’Olot residence, where she receives the love of her family, her colleagues and the center’s staff. As her daughter Rosa Moret explains to ACN, her mother “has been losing strength in recent months”, and since last summer she has had “a progressive decline”. Despite this, “he does not suffer from any pain, nor from any disease”. Branyas is close to being one of the ten longest-lived people in history, but she considers the records to be “nonsense”.
A privileged place in the ranking of longevity
According to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which verifies the birth and death dates of the world’s oldest people for the Guinness World Records list, there are currently eleven people who have outlived Branyas, all women and none of them are still alive. On May 10, he will surpass two, and enter the top 10. The same sources indicate that there have only been four people who have reached the age of 118, and only one has exceeded the twelfth decade of life: the French Jeanne Calment, who he died at the age of 122 years and 164 days in August 1997.
Branyas became the oldest person alive on January 17, 2023, when 118-year-old Frenchwoman Lucile Randon died. The second longest-lived person on the planet right now according to the GRG is the Japanese Tomiko Itooka, who is a year younger than the Catalan.
A simple and resilient woman
Branyas’ daughter, Rosa Moret, tells ACN that her mother knows that there is no one in the world older than her, but that she “doesn’t give it any importance”. “She says that this is no merit for her or anyone else”, she adds, and comments that the family did not imagine that she would live so many years. He also says that “the world is very big and it’s hard to believe” that his mother is the leader of the world’s longevity ranking.
Moret reveals that she has not been hospitalized, but that with age, she has recently lost sight, hearing and also memory, in addition to her mobility, as she cannot walk without help. Despite everything, she maintains her mental faculties and can still converse with her relatives, the only ones who visit her apart from the staff of the residence. “He no longer wants to do interviews or any of that, what he wants is peace,” says Moret. His mother spends the day sitting in the chair in her room where she often receives attention from the center’s professionals.
During the interview with ACN, Moret also explains that Branyas has seen all his friends die, but that probably one of the factors that has led him to live for so many years is “that he adapts very well”. “When something like a death happens, she gets sad, but she soon reacts, saying that it’s what happens, that God wanted it this way, that we have to adapt and that we have to continue living,” he says. In fact, resilience is a lesson that Branyas has taught young people on several occasions, his daughter adds.