It may not be as famous as Cíes, but Torralla 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 legal situation. Although it is connected to the Vigo coast through a 400 -meter bridge and in theory it must comply with the Costas Law, in practice it is an impenetrable urbanization for most of the vigueses.
At the end of the viaduct there are A garrita 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 at the Marine Science Station (Ecimat), a space linked to the University of Vigo that premiered in 2006.
Torralla is therefore a city within a city, a private and exclusive village available to its even more exclusive residents, including the local business elite. The country It points out that there are only 149 people censored, although in good weather the number of residents multiplies.
Two ways to visit her
As access is closed to anyone outside the island, there are only two ways 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 coves located on both sides of the catwalk, accessible since the 90s thanks to a sentence of the Supreme. The other (more comfortable) is to open Google Maps and observe the internal roads, large gardens, wide gardens, wide gardens, chalets and swimming pools that are distributed throughout the island.
Its most characteristic piece (and perhaps controversial) can be observed however from a good part of the Vigués coast: a tower 70 meters high and 21 plants built between the end of the 60 and early 70s, during the boom of developmentalism. In Idealista it is possible to find the advertisement of a 120 square meter floor on the 18th plant that is sold for 620,000 euros.
Another peculiarity of the island is that in practice it is intended as a Private condominium in which Vigo’s City Council barely has a presence: basic services, such as lighting, water supply or vial maintenance are assumed by the neighborhood community, precise The confidential.
That Toral is today an island of private use, an anomaly of the Galician coast, is greatly explained by its complex history. Until the second third of the nineteenth century the island belonged to the Church, but after the confiscation it went to the Marqués de Valladares. Since then it has changed ownership (in 1884 there came to rise there a prosperous factory, Iberian string) until in the mid -60s it ended up under the control of a society, Torralla SA.
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 Huge residential tower and the thirty of exclusive chalets that are distributed by its surface, some with gardens and pools that arrive almost to the rocks where the sea breaks.
In his day he even considered the construction of a mamotreto of nine heights and 120 meters in length for 85 exclusive homes that met the frontal opposition of the city. “It goes against every idea not only landscape, but I am even afraid that the island sinks,” the then mayor, Joaquín García Picher came to ironize in 1975. After an intense pull and loosen, three years later the Supreme Court proved him right and gave the judicial folder to the megaproject.
Goodbye to privileges?
Torralla has been grabbing headlines for years due to its peculiar status, but a quick search arrives on Google to verify that its rhythm has increased exponentially in recent months. The reason is simple: if the government fulfills its word, in not much time its residents could lose one of the privileges that have been conserved for several decades, to be the only ones (except for Ecimat workers) who can enjoy the coast of the island.
In June, during a visit to the neighboring beach of Samil, Minister Sara Aagesen guaranteed that she will defend “he aCceso to the public domain Maritime-terrestrial “in the area.” It has to be for public use and we are working on the definition of the project, we hope to have it just around the summer, “he insisted. Wednesday The confidential He revealed that the government is already finalizing the project to achieve it, which in practice would go through lifting the garrita that prevents the passage of non -residents and recovering the public domain strip of the insula.
To understand that effort you have to understand some keys before. The first, the status of the island. What Torralla SA has is a concession, an authorization of almost a century granted in the mid -60s and will not end until 2064.
In between, at the end of the 80s, the Government approved the Law of Coasts, a regulation that regulates the public use of the coast and the one that right now does not adjust the Galician island. In fact, if the vigueses (and the rest of the visitors) can cross the bridge and sunbathe on the coves of the island located on their margins is not because of the hospitality of the SA, but by a sentence of the 90s that forced him to retract the garrita to the end of the catwalk, allowing his public access.
The Coastal Law however demands something else.
The norm includes a “transit servitude” space that must respect a strip of six meters widean area in which “the construction of any installation is not authorized and should be left permanently expedited for pedestrian public use.” That is what Vigo aspires now with the government’s support: a perimeter walk of more than 1.5 km and at least six meters wide for which residents will probably have to give land.
With him they would achieve two objectives: to end decades of privileges and erase Torralla from the very small percentage of the Spanish coast that still does not respect the demarcation.
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Images | Angel (Flickr), Google Earth and Google Maps
