Traditionally he was identified with a supposed son of infante Ordoño Ramírez and his wife infanta Cristina Bermúdez and hence grandson of two kings, Ramiro III and Bermudo II of León.
The earliest reference to the marriage dates from 18 April that year, when the couple witnessed a donation of her brother Ramiro Garcés.
More probably she was from north of the Pyrenees, perhaps the daughter of Aimery IV, viscount of Rochechouart, one of the French barons who had answered Alfonso VI's international call for aid against the Almoravids following the Battle of Sagrajas (1086),[4] or of Hugh II, Count of Empúries and his wife Sancha de Urgell.
[2] García's public career began late in the reign of Ferdinand I, when he subscribed a charter of 10 May 1062, now in the cartulary of the monastery of Arlanza.
[8] There is a false document dated 1075 by which Alfonso VI purportedly made a grant of privileges to Burgos, which lists García as a confirmant.
[11] With this expedition Alfonso VI may have been intending to produce discord between the taifa kingdoms, furthering his hegemony in the south of the peninsula.
[2] Historian Ramón Menéndez Pidal argued that García was appointed count of Nájera in 1076, a contention not generally accepted today.
[2][9] At the same time as his return to court, García thus received a vast fief comprising the erstwhile southern provinces of Navarre, promotion to the highest aristocratic title in the realm, and the hand in marriage of a Navarrese princess, presumably through Alfonso's actions, since the Navarrese royal family had fallen under his protection after the assassination of Sancho IV of Navarre in 1076.
It may be that the Lope Íñiguez who by 1081 had been granted all three of the Basque señoríos of Álava, Biscay, and Guipúzcoa was the same person as the Lop Jiménez who co-led the 1079 expedition against Seville.
By 20 November 1085, according to a document in the cartulary of San Millán, García's lordship was extended south to include Calahorra, an episcopal seat.
[2] At this time, corresponding to the alférez-ship of Pedro González de Lara from 1088 to 1091, García was the most prominent magnate in the kingdom and he frequently attended the royal court, confirming eleven charters out of a total of eighteen from these years, the most of any count.
[15] At about this time, however, Raymond of Burgundy, a newcomer to the kingdom, was married to the king's eldest daughter, Urraca, and he quickly surpassed García in power, although the latter still confirmed fifteen of twenty-seven royal diplomas of the period 1092–99, more than any other magnate.
Alongside the Zaragozans, the Castilian counts led their personal retinues against the besiegers, but were defeated on 18 November in the Battle of Alcoraz.
This campaign had begun as planned harassment of Aragon, perhaps a concerted action with Zaragoza to re-take Huesca, but it was diverted by the arrival of an Almoravid army in the south centre of the peninsula.
His death is recorded in the De rebus Hispaniae, the Chronicon mundi, and the Chronica naierensis, where the battle is dated to 24 June.