Although ancient cultures, castreños, Romans or Swabians, would spread throughout the Galician coast, there is no record to ensure Sálvora settlements, so we have no documented human presence on the island until the High Middle Ages, when Sálvora is donated to the Church of Santiago by the crown .
Already in the late Middle Ages the island was used as a base to attack the inside of the Ría de Arousa, by Viking invaders, Saracens or pirates and corsairs later, in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This would prevent the continuance of a stable population in Sálvora , as it would happen in Cies, Ons and Cortegada. In the sixteenth century, the Church gave the island to the nobility, with a settlement ruled by feudalism, in which the inhabitants would deliver part of the crop and fishing.
They would install a salting fish factory between 1770-1779, known as "The Warehouse" , and later , in 1789 a tuna fishery was granted for exclusive use of the island to beyond its waters.
This way, people of the coast populate the island gathering in the place where today are the remains of the small village, abandoned in the early years of the 1970s. No school, church or health services, teachers would be lighthouse keepers. Sálvora Lighthouse is still inhabited today like the one of Ons.
