With the demolition of the first of the two blast furnaces at the El-Hadjar complex, in Annaba wilaya, the pioneers’ dream of a flourishing steel industry, a symbol of modernity and of the hopes for a prosperous future in the newly independent Algeria of the 1970s, has disappeared. The news went unnoticed or nearly so. Starting on 19 May 2022, two crews worked alternate shifts day after day dismantling blast furnace number 1, which had long been the centrepiece of the El-Hadjar steel (.)