The oldest resident in the history of Mogán, Antonio González Suárez, died this Thursday at the age of 105. A native of the Veneguera neighborhood, on March 28 he would have turned 106. The municipality loses a very beloved man, who enjoyed a life marked by his dedication to work and love for his family
The oldest resident in the history of Mogán, Antonio González Suárez, died this Thursday at the age of 105. A native of the Veneguera neighborhood, he would have turned 28 on March 106. The municipality loses a very beloved man, who enjoyed a life marked by his dedication to work and love for his family.
Antonio González Suárez was born in Veneguera on March 28, 1918, being the third of nine siblings. Always restless, he went to school from the ages of seven to fourteen and, every day, after class, he took care of the family goats. His first jobs were clearing land on his grandmother's farm and making road walls, working from dawn to dusk.
Like all young people of his generation, he was caught by the Civil War. At that time, when he was 19, he worked on the La Puntilla highway and they went looking for him to do his military service, which lasted seven years. Fortunately, he did not participate directly in the conflict, since while it was taking place on the Peninsula, he was stationed in Morocco, where he spent four years, a period during which his father died. When the war ended, he spent three more years as a lookout in the watchtowers on the beaches of Maspalomas and Puerto Rico.
He returned to Veneguera at the age of 26, where he began to work on his farm, from which he never left. He married Margarita at the age of 30 and just one year later, in 1949, his only daughter, Ramona, was born. The couple saved to buy a plot of land on which little by little they built his house, because Antoñito, as they knew him, was always very family-oriented and liked to have his home full of boys and girls playing. Thus, he enjoyed his three grandchildren, to whom he told invented bedtime stories, and for whom he quit smoking.
Although he retired, he continued to dedicate himself to his goats, often accompanied by a donkey, which was part of his legs and the only means of transportation he ever managed. Until he was 103 years old, he prepared breakfast and dinner himself, but from then on his legs began to fail him and he needed more support from his family, who have always been there for him. Despite this, he still liked to go to his farm and sit in his patio every morning to enjoy the sun.
Antonio leaves the municipality a little orphaned, and in particular the Veneguera neighborhood, which will miss his morning greetings and some, also, the good opponent he was playing dominoes. His last birthday remains in the memory, in which relatives, neighbors, among them the councilors and the mayor of Mogán, Onalia Bueno, celebrated Antoñito's life by giving him all the affection and love that this good man, as he was until the end, he deserved.
