With the settlement of the island, a small village would be establishing, where there are still remains of houses, “faladoiros” (places where people met to talk), wineries or “pías” for the cattle, on the east side , near the dock, next to the current hermitage (the one we have today is from the seventeenth century and worked alongside the leper hoospital until XVIII).
The inhabitants worked on fishing, shellfishing and livestock farming with corn crops, vineyards or vegetables and care of cows, sheep and chickens. The landscape was very different from today, small farms across the island and very few trees.
In the nineteenth century, the city councils of Arousa and Carril (which owned the island before the union of these municipalities in 1908 ) decided to donate the island to King Alfonso XIII , to spend his summers here, developing even plans for a palace and a drawbridge that would connect the island with Carril.
At that time, about twenty neighbours inhabited the island, although there were many people from the surrounding land. Between 1907-1910, the donation was made but by that time the Crown had already started building of the Magdalena Palace in Santander as a summer residence, so the project was stopped and became a royal hunting ground but without neighbours. The monarch visited the island for a day of hunting but showed no interest, thus the aspirations of the developers of the royal palace were frustrated.
