Massimo Pignata opened DelaCrem in 2010 in a space that had been empty for eleven years. Today, the ice cream shop has queues every day and employs 50 people across three sales points.
Massimo Pignata arrived in Barcelona nearly twenty years ago, fell in love with the city and a Catalan woman, learned the language, and, at over thirty, decided to leave tourism to learn how to make ice cream. In 2010, he rented a space on Enric Granados street that no one wanted: eleven years empty, with no terraces or pedestrianisation planned. There, he set up a workshop, slept little, and opened DelaCrem.
In the first year, everyone could fit in a passport photo: him in the workshop and a waitress on the other side of the counter. No chairs or tables, just ice cream to take away. The record cash intake was a thousand euros on a July day in 2010, during the demonstration for the Statute. The first winter was the ultimate test: the cash flow was non-existent, the bank shut its doors, and his father, from Italy, acted as an improvised bank to pay suppliers and salaries.
This initial fragility contrasts with the current picture. The company employs around 50 people on full and part-time contracts. About fifteen are dedicated to production; the rest, to service and the daily organisation of three sales points. Each ice cream shop has its own workshop, and each workshop has its own rhythm, team, and orders. There is no large central warehouse or freezers full of frozen tubs. 80% of the ice cream is made the same day.
The scene in the Enric Granados workshop is repeated season after season. Boxes of local fruit, knives, hands pitting cherries one by one and cleaning strawberries one at a time. Sixteen years later, the strawberries still arrive whole and leave clean from the same table. It’s not a romantic image, Pignata insists, but a guarantee: “Either fresh strawberries, or nothing.” Frozen strawberries are banned. The calendar dictates.
The agricultural cycle also decides the menu. There is no peach ice cream without seasonal peaches. Cherries disappear when the harvest ends. In summer, melons and watermelons arrive; in autumn, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and chestnuts; in winter, baked apples with cinnamon. Spring, he admits, is the worst season for an ice cream maker: few fruits, a lot of waiting, until apricots and the first cherries return.
Today, the corner of Enric Granados hosts one of the most persistent queues in Eixample. Tourists with maps and locals who no longer need to look at the chalkboard. Even some international stars, like Dua Lipa, have made a stop. Everyone waits for the same gesture: the metal lid that lifts so the scoop can silently enter an ice cream that is not visible but is sensed.
Pignata, who grew up in Piedmont in a farming family, studied Contemporary History before working in tourism. His training in ice cream making came from cleaning fruit, adjusting recipes, and observing how an ice cream shop could be taken as seriously as a good restaurant. Now, DelaCrem is a gastronomic destination in Barcelona, with three locations and a loyal clientele that values quality and seasonality.
For the locals of Barcelona, DelaCrem represents a model of artisanal production that prioritises fresh local fruit and the minimum possible sugar. The ice cream shop not only offers a product but a philosophy: to respect the agricultural calendar and produce every day. Those who want to try their ice creams can visit Enric Granados or the other two sales points, where queues are common, especially in high season.
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