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María Branyas Morera

Validated By: On Date: Jan. 19th 2023

María Branyas Morera is an American-Spanish supercentenarian who is recognized by Guinness World Records as being the oldest validated living person in the world since the death of 118-year-old Lucile Randon of France on 17 January 2023. She is among the oldest people known to have survived COVID-19, which she contracted at the age of 113 in April 2020. Her age was also validated by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG).

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Biography

Maria Branyas Morera was born in San Francisco, California, USA on 4 March 1907. Her family emigrated to San Francisco in 1906. They later traveled to New Orleans, from here they departed to Olot, Catalonia, Spain in 1915. While emigrating to Spain aboard the Catalania, Branyas Morera injured her eardrum in a fall, resulting in her permanently losing hearing in one ear. Towards the end of the voyage, Branyas Morera’s father, Joseph Branyas Julia, died from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 37, leaving Branyas Morera’s mother to raise the family of five on her own. She married in 1931, and had three children.


In 2000, when she was 93, Branyas Morera moved into a care home in Olot. At the age of 110, she reportedly still read the newspaper every day. As of August 2019, she had 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Branyas Morera is deaf in one ear, and partially deaf in the other, with precautions taken at her nursing home. This made communication difficult, but using a voice-to-text device, her relatives are able to communicate fluently.

In April 2020, at the age of 113, Branyas Morera tested positive for COVID-19, but successfully recovered. She was the oldest recorded survivor of the disease until Lucile Randon pf France, then 116, recovered in 2021. In a subsequent interview with the Observer, Branyas Morera called for a revolution in treatment of the elderly, saying “This pandemic has revealed that older people are the forgotten ones of our society. They fought their whole lives, sacrificed time and their dreams for today’s quality of life. They didn’t deserve to leave the world in this way.”

In January 2021, Branyas Morera received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, making her one of the oldest validated supercentenarians to get vaccinated.


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Recognition

On 22 December 2019, Branyas Morera became the oldest known living person in Spain following the death of Josefa Santos Gonzalez. She became the last (known) living person in Spain born in 1907, following the death of Virtudes Tomas Navarro on 20 April 2020.

She became the last (known) living person in Europe born in 1907, following the death of Marie-Louise Berthelot on 16 January 2021.

Aside from being the oldest living validated person in Spain, Branyas Morera is also the oldest person ever born in the U.S. state of California, as well as the oldest validated living emigrant in the world. She is also the second-oldest validated living person in Europe and in the world, after Lucile Randon.

She became the last person living in Spain born in the 1900s decade, following the death of Saturnino de la Fuente García on 18 January 2022.

She became the oldest validated living American-born person, following the death of Thelma Sutcliffe on 17 January 2022, as well as the the oldest validated living person born in the Americas, following the death of Antonia da Santa Cruz on 23 January 2022.

She became the third-oldest validated living person in the world, following the death of Kane Tanaka on 19 April 2022.

She became the last surviving validated emigrant born in 1907, following the death of Casilda Ramona Benegas on 28 June 2022.

She became the second-oldest validated living person in the world, as well as the oldest validated living emigrant in the world, following the death of Tekla Juniewicz on 19 August 2022.

She is currently the second-oldest validated person ever to live in Spain, after Ana Vela-Rubio.

Some information in this Directory Profile may have been adapted from contributions to the Gerontology Wiki.