  We discuss the production of hadronic resonances in very peripheral heavy ion
collisions, where the ions collide with impact parameter larger than twice the
nuclear radius and remain intact after the collision. We compare the resonance
production through two-photon and double Pomeron exchange, showing that when we
impose the condition for a peripheral interaction the $\gamma \gamma$ process
dominates over the Pomeron interaction, due to the short range propagation of
this last one. We also discuss the observation of light resonances through the
subprocess $\gamma \gamma \to R \to \gamma \gamma $, which is a clean signal
for glueball candidates as well as one way to check the existence of a possible
scalar $\sigma$ meson.
