World’s oldest person, whose secret was avoiding ‘toxic people,’ dies at 117

She was dubbed a “supercentenarian” and the world’s oldest person. She celebrated her 117th birthday earlier this year with a small cake with candles, and credited “staying away from toxic people” among the reasons she lived so long.

María Branyas Morera an American-born Spaniard, died in her sleep this week, her family said in a post on X. Having lived to be 117 years and 168 days, she was the eighth-oldest person in history, the Guinness World Records said. The cause of her death was not made public; Guinness said that beyond hearing and mobility issues, she had no major health issues.

“Maria Branyas has left us. She has died as she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” Branyas’s family said on Monday. Her death was also confirmed by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), a U.S.-based nonprofit that researches and monitors supercentenarians, who are defined as people aged 110 and over.

Branyas’s family said that in recent days she had spoken of feeling close to death and would miss everyday mundanities such as drinking coffee, eating yogurt and seeing her pet.

“I will also leave my memories, my reflections and I will cease to exist in this body,” she said before her death, according to the family. “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.”

Branyas attributed her longevity to “luck and good genetics,” according to Guinness. She also cited “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.”

Born in San Francisco on March 4, 1907, Branyas also lived in Texas and New Orleans as a child before moving to Spain age 7, living briefly in Barcelona and the Catalonia region, Guinness said.

She lived through two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and two pandemics - the 1918 flu and coronavirus. She contracted covid-19 in 2020 age 113 but made a swift recovery after suffering mild symptoms, according to Guinness.

Branyas “passed away peacefully at the nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, where she resided for the past two decades,” Guinness said. “Beyond being hard of hearing and having mobility issues, she had no other health issues, and her mind was perfectly lucid,” it added.

In 1931, she married Joan Moret, a doctor, who died in 1976. She worked alongside her husband to treat wounded soldiers during the Spanish Civil War, and worked as his assistant for some years after, Guinness said. Together they had three children, 11 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.

Branyas traveled to Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, the GRG said, and enjoyed sewing, reading and music. “At the age of 110, she reportedly still read the newspaper every day,” it added.

Branyas became the verified oldest person in the world in January 2023, according to Guinness, after the death of French nun Lucile Randon, known also as Sister André, who died aged 118. The oldest living person in the world is now 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka of Japan, who was born in 1908, GRG said. In the United States, Elizabeth Francis, 115, is the oldest American alive.

“I haven’t done anything special to get to this age,” Branyas told Spain’s El País newspaper in an interview earlier this year. But Waclaw Jan Kroczek, who has studied Branyas’s life as acting director of GRG’s Supercentenarian Research and Database Division, called her “a case of exceptional longevity.”

“Not only has she maintained her lucidity in her very extreme age but also she maintained great physical abilities,” he told The Washington Post by telephone Wednesday. “She was able to walk until a very old age. She even survived the covid pandemic.”

He called living to be age 110 a “rare phenomenon,” but to live to 117 was a “testament to her resilience and strength,” he said.

He noted that as well as having good genes and a healthy lifestyle and diet, many supercentenarians also held a “positive attitude,” throughout much of their lives. “Stress is the killer,” Kroczek added, and “accelerates aging and can cause you to pass away earlier on.”

The Post spoke to 14 centenarians on what it takes to live a healthy and happy life. Many also credited their longevity to thinking positively, cherishing friendships and being kind.

A person’s sex could also be a factor, said David Gems, professor of biogerontology at University College London’s Institute of Healthy Ageing. Women tend to live longer and age more slowly than men, he said.

But “in terms of genetics other than sex differences … longevity certainly runs in families, but in the main, individual longevity is a matter of luck, really,” he told The Post.

Based on a 2022 estimate by the United Nations, there are 593,000 centenarians around the world. It’s a fast-growing age group and the U.N. projects there will be 3.7 million centenarians alive by 2050.