During his youth, he worked as a notary clerk while writing for El Palenque de la Juventud under the pseudonym of "Florete". In 1888, he founded La Linterna, a magazine that was censored by the government. He then worked for El Clamor del País, a San Juan political newspaper. He also collaborated for La Democracia, another newspaper which he ended up directing in 1895.
Exile in Europe
In 1896, after attacking the government in his newspaper, he was convicted to prison by a War Council. However, he fled to France where he stayed for a while. He then moved to Madrid, where he was detained and jailed for several months. After receiving a pardon from the Ministry of Overseas, Don Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, he remained in Madrid for three years collaborating for the newspapers El Globo, Heraldo de Madrid, and El Liberal.
Abril continued to collaborate with newspapers and magazines like Revista de las Antillas, Puerto Rico Ilustrado, and El Mundo, as well as the Cuban publication Las Antillas. He also wrote poems which were compiled in the 1900 book Amorosas. Other of his books were Sensaciones de un cronista (1903) and Un héroe de la independencia de España y América: Antonio Valero de Bernabé (1929).
Abril y Ostalo was the first president of the Puerto Rican Academy of History and since 1931 served as Official Historian of Puerto Rico, until his death on December 5, 1935. He is buried at Puerto Rico Memorial Cemetery in Carolina, Puerto Rico.
