In 2011, Endesa permanently shut down the Sant Adrià power plant, which by then was operating solely as a backup in exceptional situations. The plant’s technology was obsolete and required significant investment to comply with European environmental regulations on pollutant emissions. The company ruled out modernizing it due to a lack of profitability and proceeded with its closure. This brought to a close a cycle that had begun nearly a century earlier at the mouth of the Besòs River, leaving Les Tres Xemeneies as a physical remnant of the metropolitan area’s energy and industrial past.