Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: US-born Spanish Maria Branyas Morera has been named the world’s oldest person by Guinness World Records (GWR) following the death of French nun Sister André earlier this month, aged 118.
She has witnessed the horrors of two world wars, a civil war, and two global pandemics. Morera was born around 116 years ago, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, and she has spent the last 22 years in a nursing home in Catalonia, Spain.
She was born on March 4, 1907, less than four years after the Wright Brothers launched the first ever power-driven flight and two years before construction on the ill-fated Titanic had begun. Morera even uses Twitter, with a bit of help from her daughter, to communicate with her followers in thousands of numbers. Her Twitter bio reads, “I am very old, but not an idiot.”
After a year of her parents’ migration to the US, Morera was born. The family moved back eight years later, but the journey proved to be a treacherous one. According to GWR, Morera’s father died of pulmonary tuberculosis toward the end of the transatlantic voyage, while she permanently lost her hearing in one ear after a fall.
She was oldest to have recovered from Covid-19
During World War 1, the family arrived in Barcelona, and Morera’s life also spanned World War II and the Spanish Civil War. She is believed to be the oldest to have recovered from Covid-19. She was told positive in May 2020. She has three children, 13 great-grandchildren, and 11 grandchildren.
In a series of tweets on Saturday in Catalan, she said she was grateful and surprised by her new status. She said that the last few days had been “stressful,” and she would not be giving any more interviews.
She tweeted. “I need peace and tranquility. I lived in the Tura Residence for 22 years, and I do not want the daily life of the residents or the staff who care for us to change.”
When Morera’s record initially became public, the Residència Santa Mara del Tura told GWR that “we will host a small celebration in residence in the coming days to honor this exceptional event.”
Jeanne Louise Calment holds the distinction of being the oldest person ever recorded. She was born on February 21, 1875, and according to GWR, she lived for 122 years and 164 days.
