It's easy to gawk at the display cases that hold a myriad of flavors at Heladería Can Miquel, now located on Carrer Montcades. Red fruits, mango, melon, wine, figs or Mahon cheese, in Can Miquel the offer is not only diverse, it is also creative and unique. A sign of identity that the ice cream parlor has preserved since its beginnings: "My grandfather invented all the flavors we offer. He started with 27 proposals and kept testing and innovating," says Marian, the founder's granddaughter.
The grandfather was Miquel Solivellas, founder of Heladería Can Miquel, who together with his wife Apol-lònia, moved to Mallorca after living for years in Barcelona. Once back on the island, the couple took the plunge and opened their first shop, now gone, on the shopping street Jaume III. Solivellas was a creator and visionary, unafraid to innovate but with a clear vision: traditional know-how, without trap or cardboard, and with local, natural and seasonal products.
This philosophy still endures today in the ice cream parlor, which continues to make its ice cream with a transparent list of ingredients: only fruit, water, sugar and milk (from Mallorca, of course). "We buy the fruit mainly from cooperatives on the island, so we prepare each flavor according to the season and this, of course, conditions our daily offer, as it not only depends on the season of the year, but also on the meteorological conditions, whether it rains more or less at that time, the conditions of the land and even of each farmer," Marian tells us.
In addition to the external factors that influence its production, internal factors must also be taken into account, such as the decision to dispense with preservatives. This fact forces the ice cream parlor to produce on demand, although Teresa, Solivellas' daughter, and Aurora, who have been in the back room preparing this delicacy for 42 years, confess that "this is not a problem, we have always worked this way and the truth is that the ice creams always sell faster than the time it takes to produce them".
"When you create a natural product, it's impossible to create it identically twice".
This way of producing, conscious and sensitive to the weather and each season of the year, surprises some people, especially the younger ones. "Accustomed to immediacy and having all the options available at any time, we have to explain to them that, for example, we don't have tangerine ice cream because it's not in season or that we've run out of lemon ice cream because this year's harvest has been poor," says Marian. However, at Can Miquel they also see that people are beginning to value what they eat, how it is made, what ingredients it contains and "they respect and admire the work involved in our production process".
The process begins with the purchase of the fruit. The person in charge of examining and acquiring the raw material is Joan, the son-in-law of the founding ice cream maker. He has been here as long as he has been in the Solivellas family, so just by taking a look at the skin of a melon he knows if it has the sweetness he wants, and by splitting a lemon in half, he knows how much juice it contains.
Often it is Joan himself who carries the fruit to the ice cream parlor. There, Teresa and Aurora prepare the ice cream the traditional way. "Some flavors take a lot of work, like lemon, because we squeeze each lemon by hand, one by one. It is the only way to control that you squeeze just the right amount because if you get to the white inner part, the juice is sour and alters the result completely", says Marian.
The way the ice cream is made, daily, as if it were a ritual, is one of the things Can Miquel's loyal customers praise the most. However, as the family reminds us, this way of working, which is now appreciated as a differential value, was the norm a few decades ago. "We haven't changed. We do exactly the same as we did 40 years ago. Those who have changed are the others".
"When people ask us how we do it, our answer is clear: as always. There are no shortcuts here".
Although tradition is very present in Can Miquel, innovation and a certain transgression are also in its DNA. Miquel Solivellas was from the beginning a visionary who dared to create surprising flavors for the time, such as trempó ice cream, wine ice cream or Mahon cheese ice cream, which, although they are well known to regular customers, continue to surprise tourists. "All these elaborations were created by my grandfather. The only thing that changes is the flavor because many factors have an influence: what part of the island the fruit is from, what the weather is like, which farmer we bought it from... When you create a natural product, it is impossible to create it identically twice".
Solivellas, who passed away in 2017, understood ice cream as more than just a dessert. For example, the trempó ice cream is ideal to go with a summer salad; the one with aromatic herbs combines great with a delicious gazpacho; the one with wine is, of course, an ally of meat; the one with prawns from Sóller, combined with avocado and lime, is a very tasty starter. "We get very complicated and, in reality, things are very simple: get a good tomato, cut it into slices and accompany it with a scoop of basil ice cream. The idea couldn't be simpler, but it's delicious."
This combination of innovation and tradition is, possibly, the reason why Can Miquel is almost the second home of many residents of the neighborhood. Here, a large part of the clientele has been here for a lifetime, generation after generation. "Our customers eat ice cream twelve months of the year and some older people, who visit us almost every day, now come with their grandchildren. They tell us about my grandparents and remind us of all the work we've been doing... and we couldn't be prouder."
This is not the only time the word pride comes up during the conversation. "When people ask us how we do it, our answer is clear: as always. There are no shortcuts here and I think my grandfather would be proud to see that everything remains the same." Because yes, despite the expansion of the premises, the little rain this summer, the problems with supplies... in Can Miquel there is something that never changes: its essence. "The day our way of doing things changes, the day the quality of our ice creams drops, we will close".
