He was born and spent his childhood in Madrid, son of the translator and poet José Méndez Herrera.
He studied baccalaureate in Rome (Italy) and graduated in Philosophy and Letters at the Complutense University of Madrid.
[2] He was awarded posthumous title with the Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2005 for Los girasoles ciegos, a book composed of four stories set in the Spanish Civil War.
[5] The last story of the book -the one that gives it its name- was taken to the cinema in 2008 by José Luis Cuerda, who also wrote the script along with Rafael Azcona, and it has the same name.
He was an editor at the publishers Les Punxes and Montena, among others, and co-founder in the 1960s of Ciencia Nueva, which was closed by Manuel Fraga in 1969.