Awards he has won for his novels include the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Soldiers of Salamis (translated by Anne McLean), and the European Book Prize for The Impostor (translated by Frank Wynne).

[3] He is part of a group of well-known Spanish novelists who have published "historical memory" fiction, focusing on the Spanish Civil War and Francoist state, including Julio Llamazares, Andrés Trapiello, and Jesús Ferrero.

[4] Soldiers of Salamis (translated by Anne McLean) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004.

[5] McLean's translations of his novels The Speed of Light and Outlaws were also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, in 2008 and 2016 respectively.

During the 2014–15 academic year, he was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Comparative Literature at St Anne's College at Oxford, England.