Gonzales

Gonzales is a white-haired old man based in Death Valley, the barren stretch of Milos. Rather than any proper workshop, he practices out of a rough, improvised clinic he has thrown together himself.

Gonzales is a warm and openhanded man, fitting automail to Milosians injured while laboring for the Cretan military that still lords over their valley, and telling his patients to pay whenever they can. His passion for the trade borders on rudeness: spotting Edward's automail arm, he yanks the boy inside, shoves him onto a stool, and starts grilling him about who built it, far more taken with the limb than with its owner. That same fervor for new techniques recalls the engineers of Rush Valley. Beneath the eccentric enthusiasm he is decent and fair, defending Edward and Alphonse at a funeral when grieving Milosians turn on them for being Amestrian, insisting the brothers are nothing like their oppressors.

Edward first meets Gonzales when the engineer drags him off the street to inspect his automail hand, and despite the rough treatment the two warm to each other, with Ed fondly dubbing him Gramps. They cross paths again as Ed and Al climb toward Table City, arriving during a funeral for Pedro, who died searching for Julia alongside Ed, held together with services for two of Julia's pupils and a mother and infant lost in childbirth. Later Ed and Winry seek Gonzales out because Ed's arm needs a gear; the old man is thrilled to meet the young mechanic, and once Winry installs the part Ed leaves her in his company. In their final meeting, after the battle for Table City, Gonzales stands among the valley's people and gives an automail leg to Julia Crichton, his adoptive granddaughter, who had lost her own limb saving her brother.