{"id":174695,"date":"2025-10-06T03:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T03:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/vigos-elite-possess-an-island-that-separates-them-from-the-rest-of-the-city-now-its-at-risk-of-changing\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T03:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T03:41:11","slug":"vigos-elite-possess-an-island-that-separates-them-from-the-rest-of-the-city-now-its-at-risk-of-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/vigos-elite-possess-an-island-that-separates-them-from-the-rest-of-the-city-now-its-at-risk-of-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigo’s elite possess an island that separates them from the rest of the city. Now, it’s at risk of changing."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Maybe it’s not as famous as The C\u00edes<\/a>, but \u00a0Toralla\u00a0 is also a unique island. In its own way, of course. More than its fauna and flora, this small insula of the southern coast of Galicia stands out for its \u00a0legal situation\u00a0. Although it is connected to Vigo’s coast through a \u00a0400-meter bridge\u00a0 and in theory, it must comply with The Costas Law<\/a>, in practice it is an \u00a0impenetrable urbanization\u00a0 for most Vigueses.<\/p>\n

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At the end of the viaduct, there is \u00a0A garrita\u00a0 with a guard who restricts the passage to the interior of the island. The barrier only rises for the (scarce) residents, their guests, and the researchers who work in the Marine Science Station<\/a> (Ecimat), a space linked to the University of Vigo that premiered in 2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Toralla is therefore a city within a city, a \u00a0private and exclusive\u00a0 village available to its even more exclusive residents, including The business elite<\/a> local. The country<\/em> Precise<\/a> that there are only \u00a0149 people\u00a0 censored there, although in good weather the number of residents multiplies.<\/p>\n

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Two Ways to Visit Her<\/h2>\n
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As access is closed to anyone outside the island, there are only \u00a0two ways\u00a0 to get an idea of what is inside. One is to cross the bridge and (without crossing the garrita), go down to one of the \u00a0coves\u00a0 located on both sides of the catwalk, accessible from the 90s<\/a> thanks to a \u00a0Supreme Judgment\u00a0. The other (more comfortable) is to open \u00a0Google Maps\u00a0, offering a \u00a0bird’s-eye view\u00a0 of internal roads, \u00a0large gardens, chalets\u00a0, and \u00a0swimming pools\u00a0 that are distributed throughout the island.<\/p>\n
Its most characteristic piece (and perhaps controversial) can be observed, however, from a good part of the \u00a0vigu\u00e9s coast\u00a0: a tower of 70 meters<\/a> high and \u00a021 plants\u00a0 raised<\/a> between the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s, during the boom of the developmentalism<\/a>. In idealist, you can find the announcement<\/a> of a floor of \u00a0120 square meters\u00a0 on the 18th plant sold for \u00a0620,000 euros\u00a0.<\/p>\n
Another peculiarity of the island is that in practice, it is intended as a \u00a0Private condominium\u00a0 in which the City of Vigo barely has a presence: basic services, such as lighting, water supply, or maintenance of the \u00a0vials\u00a0, are assumed by the neighborhood community, Precise The Confidential<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n
That Torralla is today an island of \u00a0private use\u00a0, an anomaly of the Galician coast, is greatly explained by its complex story<\/a>. Until the second third of the 19th century, the island belonged to the \u00a0Church\u00a0, but after confiscation<\/a>, it went to the \u00a0Marquis de Valladares\u00a0. Since then, it has changed ownership (in 1884, a prosperous factory came to rise there, Iberian string<\/a>) until in the mid-60s it ended up under the control of a society, \u00a0Torralla S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This episode was key to the future of the insula, which saw how in just a few years the bridge was built that connects it with the coast, the \u00a0huge residential tower\u00a0 and the thirty exclusive chalets that are distributed across its surface, some with gardens and pools that reach almost to the rocks where the sea breaks.<\/p>\n
In its day, the construction of a \u00a0nine-story building\u00a0 and 120 meters<\/a> long for \u00a085 exclusive homes\u00a0 met frontal opposition from the city. “It goes against every idea not only \u00a0landscape\u00a0, but I am even afraid that the island sinks,” he claimed<\/a> in 1975 the then mayor, Joaqu\u00edn Garc\u00eda Picher. After intense negotiations, three years later the \u00a0Supreme Court\u00a0 proved him right, granting judicial approval for the megaproject.<\/p>\n
Goodbye to Privileges?<\/h2>\n
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Toralla has been making headlines for years due to its peculiar \u00a0status\u00a0, but a quick search on Google verifies that the rate of news coverage has increased significantly in recent months. The reason is simple: if the government fulfills its promise<\/a>, residents could soon lose one of the privileges they have retained for several decades, being the only ones (except for Ecimat workers) allowed to enjoy the coast of the island.<\/p>\n
In June, during a visit to the neighboring beach of Samil, Minister Sara Aagesen guaranteed<\/a> that she would defend ”\u00a0access to the public domain\u00a0 maritime-terrestrial” in the area. “It has to be for public use,” she insisted, referring to a project expected to be unveiled around summer. Wednesday, The Confidential<\/em> revealed<\/a> that the government is already finalizing the project, which would involve lifting the garrita that prevents the passage of non-residents and recovering the public domain strip of the insula.<\/p>\n
Understanding this effort requires a grasp of some key issues. Firstly, the status of the island. What \u00a0Torralla S.A.\u00a0 has is a \u00a0concession\u00a0, an authorization lasting nearly a century that was granted in the mid-60s and will not end until 2064<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In between, in the late 80s, the government approved the Coastal Law<\/a>, which regulates public use of the coast and one that does not currently apply to the Galician island. In fact, if Vigueses (and other visitors) can cross the bridge and sunbathe on the island’s \u00a0coves\u00a0, it is not due to the hospitality of Torralla S.A., but because of a ruling from the 90s that forced it to retract the \u00a0garrita\u00a0 to the end of the catwalk, allowing public access.<\/p>\n
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The \u00a0Coastal Law\u00a0, however, demands something more specific. It includes a \u00a0“traffic servitude”\u00a0 that requires a strip of \u00a0six meters wide\u00a0, an area where “the construction of any installation is not authorized and should be left permanently expedited for pedestrian public use.” That is what Vigo now aspires to achieve with government support: a \u00a0perimeter walk\u00a0 of more than 1.5 km and at least six meters wide, for which residents \u00a0might\u00a0 have to yield land.<\/p>\n
This proposal would achieve two key objectives: ending decades of privileges and erasing Toralla from the \u00a0very small fraction\u00a0 of the Spanish coast that still does not uphold the public demarcation.<\/p>\n
Images | Angel (Flickr)<\/a>, Google Earth<\/a> and Google Maps<\/p>\n

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General News – 2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maybe it’s not as famous as The C\u00edes, but \u00a0Toralla\u00a0 is also a unique island. In its own way, of course. More than its fauna and flora, this small insula of the southern coast of Galicia stands out for its \u00a0legal situation\u00a0. Although it is connected to Vigo’s coast through a \u00a0400-meter bridge\u00a0 and in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36399],"tags":[4560,364,3525,48,39948,4321,1207,17573,43264],"class_list":["post-174695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-changing","tag-city","tag-elite","tag-island","tag-possess","tag-rest","tag-risk","tag-separates","tag-vigos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}