Her family wrote in a post on her X account that she had died in her sleep. She had been living in a nursing home. “A few days ago she told us: ‘One day I will leave here. I will not try coffee again, nor eat yogurt, nor pet my dog,’” her family wrote in Catalan in the post. “‘I will also leave my memories, my reflections, and I will cease to exist in this body. One day I don’t know, but it’s very close, this long journey will be over.’” Ms. Branyas was born on March 4, 1907, in San Francisco, and grew up in several American cities, including New Orleans, where her father, a journalist, started a Spanish-language magazine that went bankrupt, according to several news articles about her life. In dire straits, the family returned to Spain when Ms. Branyas was a child. On the boat to Spain, her father died of tuberculosis.
In Spain, she lived through the country’s civil war and the brutal Franco regime. She had clear memories of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, she told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. “I haven’t done anything special to get to this age,” she said in an interview with another Spanish, newspaper El País, this year. But Manel Esteller, the chairman of genetics at the University of Barcelona and one of the researchers who studied the reasons for Ms. Branyas’s long life, would disagree. In addition to her genetic makeup and her lifestyle — she did not smoke and exercised moderately — Dr. Esteller said that she was a survivor of war and various hardships, which he thinks helped her live longer. “It is thought that people that have survived struggle, they have an advantage,” he said.
Ms. Branyas was recognized as the oldest living person in January 2023, after the death of Lucile Randon, a French nun known as Sister André. According to the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks the world’s supercentenarians, the oldest living person is now Tomiko Itooka of Japan, who is 116 years old. Ms. Branyas’s survivors include her two daughters, who are 91 and 82, and many grandchildren. Reaching the age of 117 takes a toll. Ms. Branyas suffered hearing and vision loss, and in recent years she struggled to move freely. Still, she had no indication of cancer, heart disease or other mortal illnesses. She also never showed signs of dementia. Having been born before the emergence of the telephone, Ms. Branyas came to embrace the digital revolution, fashioning herself on social media as “Super Àvia Catalana,” or “Super Catalan Grandma.” She posted bite-size pieces of life advice, observations and jokes to thousands of followers.
In her biography on X, she wrote, “I’m old, very old, but not an idiot.” Since becoming the oldest living person, she had to manage a torrent of media interest, and she playfully stymied the reporters who lined up outside her nursing home for interviews. The attention eventually became too much, and her family stopped allowing visitors. Like many supercentenarians, Ms. Branyas became the subject of scientific fascination. Dr. Esteller, the researcher who studied her genetics and lifestyle, found that her genes were protective against DNA damage, and that she had low levels of fat and sugar in her blood — all of which he said was helpful for living a long life. His research also found that her cells aged much slower than she did, meaning that she had a lower “biological age” than her actual age.
The Catalan diet, which is similar to the Mediterranean diet and includes a lot of olive oil, has also been linked to longer survival, he said. He added that Ms. Branyas liked to eat yogurt. “What do you expect from life?” a doctor once asked Ms. Branyas while retrieving blood samples for study, according to El País. Ms. Branyas, unmoved, answered simply: “Death.”
