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María Branyas , the oldest woman in Spain at 113, according to the Gerontology Research Group association, is also from now on the oldest person to overcome the coronavirus after doing so in the residence where she lives in Olot (Girona ).

Daughter of a journalist from Pamplona who was responsible for the American magazine Mercurio and a Barcelona- born woman , María was born on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco (United States), where her father had gone for work after spending a season in Mexico .

After a long journey through New Orleans and the Catalan towns of Barcelona, ​​Banyoles, Girona, Calonge i Sant Antoni and Palol de Revardit, for about two decades she has lived in the Santa María del Tura Residence in Olot , where she had a friend and cousin from her husband.

This center, as it happens in many of its scope throughout Spain, has suffered the cruelty and lethality of the coronavirus with different deaths confirmed by COVID-19 or suspected of being it.

One of the good news for the residence is that María, who was diagnosed in April with COVID-19 and has been isolated in her room for several weeks, has given a negative result in the last test, which shows that she has overcome the disease.

The old woman, of whom her daughter explains that her head is "very good" but that she has lost a lot of vision and hearing , considers the pandemic "a very great pity for everyone" and that, in general, the virus is unknown "where it came, how it came and why. "

At 113 years old, María assures that, in health , she is "fine, with the small inconveniences that everyone can have" , and thanks the treatment of the professionals of the residence: "The people here are very kind, very attentive "

Maria "had discomfort without any other symptoms"

According to her daughter Rosa Moret, her mother is "a strong and positive woman", who, affected by the coronavirus, "caught a urine infection and was unwell without any other symptoms , but the tests they did through the Care Center Primary (CAP) tested positive. "

These weeks that she has been isolated in her room, her life has changed little, although she was "bored, anguished" , according to Rosa, who Mary fired "quickly" when they spoke on the phone.

The last day that the family was able to visit her precisely was that of her 113th anniversary party, on March 4, and since then all contact has been by phone.

"Now that she is well, she is wonderful, she wants to speak, to explain, to make her reflections, it is her again," says her daughter, who, along with her husband, keeps a Twitter account of Maria .

Through it, he explains places that his mother visited, childhood memories and episodes of someone's life, who, in 1915, returned by boat from America because his father had fallen ill with tuberculosis , although he died on board and his body was thrown away. Sea.

To María, when asked about the secret of her longevity, she replies that it is a matter of "having good health," says her daughter Rosa smiling, who does not remember that her mother, who has never smoked or seen her doing more sports than her walks along the Rambla de Girona with her friends, she has had no serious illness, "not even a broken bone".

In this long life, Maria has seen her friends, parents, her three brothers and August, one of her three children, pass away along with María Teresa and Rosa, who are 86 and 76 years old, respectively, but the latter explains that she considers that "it is what is and must be accepted".

The oldest old woman in Spain, who married Joan Moret, a doctor from Llagostera (Girona) in 1931, had three children and now has eleven grandchildren, one of whom is already sixty years old , and thirteen great-grandchildren. Her family is looking forward to all this to be able to visit Maria again.

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