He held important positions at the courts of successive Castilian monarchs and guarded the frontier with Navarre, to whose Jiménez rulers he was related.
Gonzalo's first wife was Sancha Fernández, illegitimate daughter of Fernando Pérez de Traba and the Portuguese countess Teresa Alfonso.
As lord of La Bureba (tenente Boroviam), Gonzalo appears over fifty times in contemporary documents beginning in 1122.
The numerous references to him in Alfonso VII's charters of 1147 suggests that he probably took part in the campaign against Almería that year.
On 15 February 1149 Gonzalo is referred to in a document as filius comitis, "son of the count", indicating the highest noble status for his father in Castile.
From then until 1165, during the minority of Alfonso VIII, he disappears from the record, but probably he was preoccupied by the invasions of La Bureba by both the Leonese and the Navarrese.
[6] This Gonzalo Ruiz was probably the lord of La Bureba, a merindad on the frontier with Navarre and consisting of the towns of Briviesca, Pancorbo, Valpuesta, and Oña.
In August 1202 he made a grant to Fernando Núñez and his wife Mayor Garcés in exchange for the estate of Belorado.
In 1177, while he was in exile in León, it was granted to Diego López II de Haro, but it was returned to Gonzal by 31 December 1180.
Other tenancies he is recorded as holding are Asturias (de Oviedo),[14] Cabezón,[15] Carrión,[16] Liébana,[17] Montenegro,[18] Orna,[19] Osma,[20] Pancorbo,[21] Pernía,[22] Saldaña,[23] Sarria,[24] and Valdeprado.
In the song Chantarai d'aquest trobadors, a famous satire by Peire d'Alvernhe of twelve contemporary troubadours, one "Guossalbo Roitz" is listed among them.
[27] If Peire's satire was performed at Puivert before an audience that included the satirised troubadours and the entourage of Eleanor of England, who was passing through Gascony on her way to marry Alfonso VIII of Castile, then the identification of Guossalbo Roitz with Gonzalo Ruiz of Bureba becomes probable.
Gonzalo Ruiz is also the name of a dedicatee of Quan vei pels vergiers desplegar, a sirventes of Bertran de Born, usually dated to the spring of 1184.
[36] Fraga, which had been conquered by Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona in 1149 (after two failed attempts by Alfonso the Battler) and divided between the Montcadas and a Templar barony, lay on the border of Catalonia and Aragon.
Evidence from line 18 and from the song's razo suggests that perhaps the Quan vei was intended to be brought by Guillem de Berguedà, a Catalan troubadour and friend of Bertran and mutual enemy of Alfonso II, to Fraga and there transferred to Gonzalo.