Maria Branyas Morera, 115, confirmed as the World’s Oldest Person

Jan. 20, 2023; The Gerontology Research Group is honored to announce that following the death of 118-year-old sister Lucile Randon, the new oldest living person in the world is Mrs. Maria Branyas Morera (born March 4, 1907 ) from Olot, Spain.

Maria Branyas Morera was born on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco, California, USA. Her family emigrated to San Francisco in 1906. Later they went to New Orleans, from where in 1915 she went to Olot, Catalonia, Spain. Her father, Joseph Branyas Julia, died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 37, leaving her mother to raise a family of five alone. Maria married in 1931 and had three children. In 2000, at the age of 93, Branyas Morera moved to a nursing home in Olot, where she still lives today.

According to GRG research, she is the second person in Spanish history to reach the age of 115.