The historic cyclist José Antonio González Linares leaves, after 23 years as mayor of his hometown, the Cantabrian municipality of San Felices de Buelna, active politics and, at 76, will not run again in the next elections in his municipality.
The runner who astonished in the Tour de France in 1970 by beating Eddy Merckx in a time trial accepted in 1999 to be the candidate for Mayor of his town, San Felices de Buelna.
However, as he has clarified numerous times, He did not do it to obtain the mayor’s office but because of the commitment he acquired with the leader of the PRC, his friend Miguel Ángel Revilla.
As the Regionalist Party has informed EFE, after 23 years in active municipal politics, José Antonio González Linares (San Felices de Buelna, 1946) is no longer the head of the PRC list to the municipal elections in that town hall and will be replaced by the lawyer, also born in that town, José Antonio Cobo.
González Linares has achieved, since his arrival in politics, great support from his neighbors and in fact, in the last elections of 2019 he obtained 9 of the eleven councilors of the San Felices de Buelna City Council.
In 2011 he was the mayor with the most votes in Spain, a support that he said he has always had from his neighbors, since he became the ‘most famous in town’ being one of the most outstanding cyclists in the Spanish peloton in the 70s.
José Antonio González Linares has always said that his goal has been to be in the townwork for San Felices de Buelna and forget the politics of partisanship.
After 23 years at the head of the San Felices de Buelna City Council, González Linares is leaving because he recognizes that he cannot “be there all his life.” “More than what he has given he cannot give,” they say from the PRC.
And the still ruler of his town affirms that the time has come to renew and that leaves the number one of the PRC to the City Council of San Felices de Buelna “to a suitable person”.
That person, a lawyer by profession with an office in Los Corrales de Buelna, will be José Antonio Coboa resident of San Felices who will choose to be the mayor of his town in May 2023.
