A Toxa (Isla de la Toja in Castilian) is a small pine-covered island connected to the O Grove peninsula by a short bridge. It became fashionable in the early 20th century when a thermal spring was discovered here, and the Grand Hotel La Toja — a vast Belle Époque pile that looks as though it was transported from a French seaside resort — was built to exploit it. The island has a slightly surreal quality: manicured gardens, a casino, and a hotel that seems far too large for its surroundings, all wrapped in pine forest and surrounded by the ría.
The most visited sight is the tiny Chapel of San Caralampio, whose exterior walls are entirely covered in scallop shells — thousands of them, cemented in overlapping rows, giving the building a texture somewhere between medieval armour and folk art. The shells are a Galician tradition and a reference to the Camino de Santiago, but the density of coverage here is extreme enough to make the chapel genuinely strange. The island is easily reached from O Grove and makes a natural combined visit.