If you’re anywhere near Catalonia, in Spain, you might think about stopping by today to wish Maria Branyas a happy birthday. She’s 117 today. Really. She’s the oldest person in the world.
Although she’s Spanish, she was born in San Francisco, California in — get this — 1907! Her family had moved there from Catalonia just the year before she was born. They moved several more times within the US, including to Texas and to New Orleans. Her father was a journalist and founded a Spanish-language magazine. The family decided to return to Catalonia in 1915 when her father’s health was declining and his doctor recommended a change in climate. It was during World War 1, and the ship had to take a circuitous route to avoid German U-boats in the North Atlantic.
The voyage back to Spain was a long and unhappy one for the family. Maria fell from one deck to another when playing with her brothers and lost the hearing in one ear. Her father’s health worsened, and he died at sea, of tuberculosis. The rest of the family made it to Spain and settled in Barcelona.
In 1931, when Branyas was 24, she married Joan Moret, a doctor, and worked with him as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War. They survived the conflict, and Moret went on to become director of the Josep Trueta Hospital in Girona, Spain, in the 1970s. Branyas continued to work as a nurse and her husband’s assistant until his death in 1976. Keep in mind that Branyas, at that point, was 69 years old.
She led a pretty active life in her retirement, traveling internationally and enjoying sewing, playing piano, and reading. She contracted pneumonia in 2000 when she was 93, and moved into a nursing home in Olot, Catalonia. She was physically active there, too, until more recently. She lost the hearing in her remaining ear when she was 108, and gave up the piano. She uses a text-to-speech computer to communicate, and in interviews has been sharp and alert, and has called for better treatment of elderly people. She specifically meant during the COVID pandemic (she caught COVID in 2020 and recovered).
Branyas has 11 grandchildren, has outlived her oldest son (who lived to be 86), and is the namesake of Proyecto Branyas, a research study into care of the elderly in Spain. She’s maintained her health and memory into extreme old age, and is currently the subject of another research study to try to figure out how she does it.
