We define a Larotonda space as a quotient space [Formula: see text] of the unitary groups of [Formula: see text]-algebras [Formula: see text] with a faithful unital conditional expectation [Formula: see text] In particular, [Formula: see text] is complemented in [Formula: see text], a fact which implies that [Formula: see text] has [Formula: see text] differentiable structure, with the topology induced by the norm of [Formula: see text]. The conditional expectation also allows one to define a reductive structure (in particular, a linear connection) and a [Formula: see text]-invariant Finsler metric in [Formula: see text]. Given a point [Formula: see text] and a tangent vector [Formula: see text], we consider the problem of whether the geodesic [Formula: see text] of the linear connection satisfying these initial data is (locally) minimal for the metric. We find a sufficient condition. Several examples are given, of locally minimal geodesics.