Through both his parents, García Moreno was descended from noble Spanish families whose lineages go back to the Middle Ages. His father, Gabriel García y Gómez de Tama was a Spaniard from Soria, descended from the house of the Dukes of Osuna, and an officer of the Spanish Royal Navy. García Moreno's mother was a member of a wealthy and prominent Spanish-Criollo aristocratic family descended from the Imperial family Komnenos, the house of the Dukes of Infantado and the first Conquerors and Spanish nobility arrived to South America. Her father was Count of Moreno and Governor-General of Guatemala, before moving to Guayaquil, where he was the Perpetual Military Governor. Among his other relatives were his first-cousins Juan Ignacio Moreno y Maisonnave, Archbishop of Toledo and Cardinal Primate of Spain, and his brothers Teodoro Moreno y Maisonnave, Count of Moreno and justice of the Spanish Supreme Court and Pedro Joaquín Moreno y Maisonnave, military historian and Chief Justice of the Royal Tribunal of the Military Orders of the Kingdom of Spain.