It's certainly good that it's configurable, at least that the history behavior could be enabled.
However, it would make sense to reverse the default, based on the "least surprise" UI rule. This is especially apparent while using Version Control (or any other plugin that opens some transient editor tabs). Say, requesting a Diff for a current file opens up a new tab; once done viewing the Diff, the tab is closed; then logically, the view should return to the requesting tab. Opening a whatever adjacent tab does not seem to fit into the intent flow, and indeed just "pollutes" the intra-tab location history.
Perhaps, I'm not much accustomed to Geany to notice things like this, but that's my new user experience.
It may be different with a web-browser, as it usually does not track intra-tab history. Still, Firefox, for example, will create a new tab at the end of stack, but on closing would get back to the "intiator" tab.