In 1767, González enlisted as a sub-lieutenant in the Regiment of Foreign Volunteers, seeing action during the amphibious assault on Algiers in 1775, where he had to take command of his company following the death of the captain and the wounding of the his lieutenant.
[1] Following action at the Invasion of Minorca (1781), he was promoted to captain and returned to Gibraltar, serving under Gravina aboard the floating battery San Cristóbal when it was bombarded and destroyed in September 1782.
González was promoted to colonel in 1793 and saw action at Mas Deu, Port Vendres, Saint-Elme and at the Siege of Collioure (1794), where he was the only commander who refused to sign the capitulation.
[1] In March 1810, González was promoted to field marshal and just a month later, as governor of the Castle of La Suda, was one of the six Spanish generals taken prisoner at the siege of Lérida (29 April – 13 May 1810), when an Imperial French army under Louis Gabriel Suchet besieged a Spanish garrison led by Major General García Conde.
[1] On his return to Spain, González was appointed chair of the Royal War Council of General Officers in Valencia, post he held until 1819, when he was transferred to the barracks at Barcelona.