Branyas Morera was born in San Francisco, California, on 4 March 1907 as the daughter of Josep Branyas Julià (born 1877) and Teresa Morera Laqué (born 1880), who were married on 14 January 1901. Her siblings were Josep (born 1902), Teresa (born 1905), and William (born 1913). In 1903, her father travelled to Mexico via Veracruz State to continue an uncle’s business.

On 19 May 1904, Branyas Morera’s father returned to Veracruz, Mexico, to wait for the arrival of the ship “SS Montserrat” and reunite with his wife and eldest son. The family relocated to San Francisco, California, on 5 October 1906, where Branyas Morera was born the following year.

The family later travelled to New Orleans, and from there emigrated to Olot, Catalonia, Spain in May 1915. While aboard the Catalania, Branyas Morera injured her eardrum in a fall, resulting in her permanently losing hearing in said ear. Towards the end of the voyage, her father died from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 37, leaving her mother to raise their four children independently.

Branyas Morera married Joan Moret Roura on 16 July 1931 and had three children: August (1932), Teresa (1933), and Rosa (1944).

Upon the commencement of the Spanish Civil War on 18 July 1936, Branyas Morera’s husband fled to France and re-entered Spain through San Sebastian, where he had some friends who could help him. He was assigned to Trujillo, Extremadura, as a military doctor. After a while, Branyas Morera and their two eldest children moved there to be with him. In 1939, following the war’s end, the family returned to Catalonia and settled in Girona, living on Minali Street.

In November 2000, when she was 93, Branyas Morera moved into a care home in Olot. At the age of 110, she still read the newspaper every day. As of August 2019, she had 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Branyas Morera is fully deaf in one ear as a result of the injury she sustained in childhood, and partially deaf in the other; using a voice-to-text device, her relatives are able to communicate fluently.

In April 2020, at the age of 113, Branyas Morera tested positive for COVID-19, but successfully recovered. She was the oldest recorded survivor of the disease until Lucile Randon of France, then 116, recovered in 2021. In a subsequent interview with the Observer, Branyas Morera called for a revolution in treatment of the elderly, saying “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 today’s quality of life. They didn’t deserve to leave the world in this way.”

In January 2021, Branyas Morera received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, making her one of the oldest validated people to do so.