Now Spain truly is the healthiest place to live!

Maria Branyas was born when humans were just starting to learn to fly and before television appeared...

Daughter of a journalist from Pamplona and a woman from Barcelona, she was born on March 4th, 1907 in San Francisco, where her Catalan family was living.
Her father, who wrote for Mercurio magazine, went to the Americas through Mexico and ended up living in San Francisco.

Then, for various reasons, they returned to Catalonia in 1914 when Maria was only seven years old and she has been there ever since.
During an interview with TV3 she recalled this moment: "We arrived by boat. Because of the war, Germany was attacking the north and you couldn't cross the Nordic seas so we had to go through the Azores and through Cuba."

Maria Branyas in 1925 at 18 years old

In 1931 she married Joan Moret, a traumatologist from Llagostera, with whom they shared a marriage for forty years and had 3 children.
During the Spanish Civil War, Maria worked as a nurse as her husbands’ assistant, in a field hospital.

She is a tennis fan and studied music at the Liceu conservatory where she learned to play the piano which she continued to play until the age of 108.

Maria has experienced many changes in her life, having lived through both World War I and II, the Spanish Flu, the Spanish Civil War and Covid!

Since she was born, many inventions have appeared and society has been transformed from top to bottom: "A total change. Everything has advanced a lot, especially the way people communicate. Now it's very easy and it used to be very difficult," Maria explained in an interview with La Vanguardia in 2019.

In 2020, Maria overcame Covid becoming one of the oldest people in the world to fight the coronavirus. Following her recovery, Maria said “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 todays’ quality of life. They didn't deserve to leave the world in this way".

She also believes that at the beginning of the 20th century people lived better "more peacefully and more happily".

After 116 years of life, Maria lives today in Olot, where her relatives visit her from time to time.
She now has a Twitter account (@MariaBranyas112) that one of her daughters created and they write reflections on life, a life in which Maria considers that she has not done anything exceptional: "I have not done anything extraordinary. The only thing has been to live."

Maria goes on to say, "Many people ask me what diet I follow to live so many years," she said on Twitter.
"I have always eaten little, but everything, and I have never followed any regime. I have not suffered from any illness or been through an operating room."

Reflecting on her age Maria says, "I think longevity is also about being lucky. Luck and good genetics. And good nutrition is so important, like the lifestyle we lead: order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and away from toxic people."

And we guess that living in Spain has also contributed to this amazing ladies' record of being the worlds oldest living person!