The Coordinadora d'Estudis Eòlics del Comtat has filed a complaint with the Seprona regarding the construction of the pilot house for the Modern Eco Village (MEV) project, a development of over 500 chalets planned by Norwegian investors on a plot of nearly 640,000 square meters in the former La Joia de Planes, next to the Beniarrés reservoir.

The organization argues that the pilot house lacks a proper license and requests the provisional suspension of construction. They state that the permit granted by the Town Hall was temporary and intended for a prefabricated structure, not “a chalet with all the amenities”. The council has confirmed to À Punt that they will process the complaint, which will be studied by the legal services, and they will respond in due course and in the appropriate manner.

The promoters of the urban development project are Norwegian Belinda Jakobsen, an influencer with over 250,000 Instagram followers, and her husband, Romanian businessman Iancu Ilies. “We are documenting the construction of the world's first modern eco-village, an ecological and truly sustainable community project for 500 homes in southern Spain,” they announce on the Modern Eco Village website. The project was made public in early 2024, and last summer they announced they already had over a hundred potential buyers from 24 nationalities.

The Coordinadora d'Estudis Eòlics, working in coordination with the Plataforma Protegim el Comtat, indicates that there may be further complaints, as they suspect the project may be involved in more illegalities. The organizations have requested more documentation from the Town Hall to study future actions, and they demand explanations for “the indiscriminate felling of pine trees and the lack of justification for the water resources needed to establish 500 chalets in a Mediterranean area with cyclical droughts within a population of 700 inhabitants”.

“It's really happening, we are building an ecological town in Spain,” announced Belinda Jakobsen last June in a video that has over three million views. At that time, they anticipated that within a year (i.e., this summer), the first residents could begin moving into this development with energy self-sufficiency, which, in addition to homes with gardens, includes plans for a hotel, cafes, a school, nurseries, a medical clinic, and land for food cultivation. The promoters also assure that the project will generate over 150 jobs.

Her TikTok profile has become one of the main showcases used by this Norwegian influencer and her husband to convey updates on the real estate project in Planes to potential investors, but it is not the only one: MEV has its own podcast on Spotify.

The website provides some details about the three types of housing offered. The most affordable is a “townhouse” ranging from 50 to 300 square meters with a garden, available from 175,000 euros. The most exclusive is a “custom villa,” with 375 square meters and 1,600 of land, selling for over 1,470,000 euros.