Vidal Morales y Morales graduated in Civil Law from the University of Havana. His first steps in History and Literature took place under the influence of Anselmo Suárez y Romero and his uncle, Antonio Bachiller y Morales.

Historical texts, which are credited to him, played an important role in the teaching of this discipline until Ramiro Guerra’s emergence, years after the establishment of the Republic. His most influential work in this regard was “Initiators and First Martyrs of the Cuban Revolution” (1901), complemented by “Notions of Cuban History” (1904).

However, his work was generally subordinated to certain political interests, on the basis of which he somewhat distorted historical circumstances and documentary information so that his research would not be dismissive to the dominant economic sector, without ceasing to praise the epic poems of the people and, in general, the figures and trends most valued by the collective consensus.

His writings from the colonial period are part of the ideological chaos of autonomism, following the failure of the Zanjón Revolution, a trend he endorsed from a historical and legal perspective. Regarding his journalistic work, he had already published the article “Espronceda’s Forgotten Pages” in “La Tertulia” in 1873, and the following year he published several texts related to his profession in “El Foro.”

His article “Three Cuban Historians” dates from 1877, published in the first issue of “Revista de Cuba.” His defense of autonomism was largely contained in a series of 22 articles he published in “El Triunfo,” entitled “The Island of Cuba in its Different Constitutional Periods.”

Among the biographical studies undertaken by Morales y Morales, we must mention those he wrote in honor of Anselmo Suárez y Romero, José Silverio Jorrín, Antonio Bachiller y Morales and Francisco de Frías Jacott (Count of Pozos Dulces). In general, his “characters” – since he builds them on flagrant idealizations – are presented in monolithic blocks of virtue, also selected for their suitability to the paradigm of his class and consequent ideological position.

His most significant contribution to the biographical genre was “Men of ’68. Rafael Morales y González,” which displays the same extensive erudition but nonetheless manages to recreate the cultural, political, and social panorama surrounding the subject, sometimes giving them greater prominence in the narrative than the subject. The work suffers from the same retarding ideological handicap but nonetheless constitutes our first example of a writing style that correlates individual actions with the historical moment in which they took place.