He holds a senior fellowship at the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies in the London School of Economics.
He is the son of renowned lawyer and journalist Pedro Crespo de Lara, who held the vice presidency to the World Press Freedom Committee for 4 terms.
He initiated postgraduate studies in Paris followed by the Ortega y Gasset Research Institute in Madrid, where he took an MA In International Relations, and finished at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he presented his D. Phil thesis on Spain and the process of European integration.
For a time he worked in cultural diplomacy representing the Spanish diplomatic mission as director of the Instituto Cervantes in Istanbul, Dublin, and London.
In his latter post, in 2016, Crespo MacLennan was in charge of the cultural programme that marked the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes.