In 1999, German property developer Matthias Kühn acquired 37,000 square metres of land in Puerto Soller. Thirty years previously, urban planning had classified this land for development. In 1990, Soller town hall granted a building licence, albeit that this was then suspended until 2004, when the town hall recognised that it could be developed.
In 2004, however, there was a moratorium on the development of this land while the Mallorca Territorial Plan was being processed. Four years later, the Balearic government introduced its urgent measures for sustainable territorial development in the Balearics. In the appendices to this law, various plots of land were specified and mapped. These included the 37,000 square metres in Puerto Soller - Muleta II. Reclassification of the land prevented any development.
When Kühn bought the land, some services (roads) had been established. This was to be the story with certain other plots that were reclassified in 2008 and which thus elevated compensation demands that were subsequently (and inevitably) made. Infrastructure of sorts had been created which indicated that there was to be development. Kühn was among other owners who filed lawsuits in seeking compensation.
Between 2013 and 2017, the land could have been developed. This was thanks to an agreement between Kühn and the government by which Muleta II was again classified as developable land. Soller town hall baulked at processing the request for development, and in 2017 the land was once more - and definitively - classified as protected land.
Companies belonging to Matthias Kühn had been hit by bankruptcy. One of these, Birdie Son Vida, had Muleta II as an asset. In 2018, a real-estate fund based in Luxembourg acquired Muleta. Its valuation was 160,000 euros. The land has very limited use. It cannot be developed for luxury chalets, that's for sure. This was what Kühn had planned and which would have been permitted under the 2013 agreement with the then government. This is why the current Balearic government must now pay him compensation of 96 million euros.