In Spain, Smoke Gets in Eyes, Nose, Ears : Pollution: Incorrigible smokers continue to resist bans sweeping much of the industrialized world.

The air got so thick at town meetings in Penagos that it was too much for the mayor, a smoker himself, and he decided to enforce no-smoking laws. As a result, he soon may be an ex-mayor.

“The air is unbreathable,” said Mayor Jose Francisco Montejo, who puffs about 30 cigarettes a day. “If there are 40 people in a meeting, 30 of them smoke.”

It is not easy to clear the air in Spain, a land of incorrigible smokers who continue to resist the trend sweeping much of the industrialized world.

Nor does the state tobacco monopoly look with kindness on anti-smoking activists. “The smoker is cornered,” said its spokesman, Daniel Hortas. “We’re going through another Inquisition, a medical inquisition.”

A 1988 Spanish law, universally ignored, prohibits smoking in elevators and government offices. When Montejo abruptly enforced it at a Penagos town meeting in February, five of the nine town council members walked out.

Mayors are elected by the council in Penagos, a town of 1,900 eight miles south of Santander, and Montejo’s fate rides on a swing vote: Raul Sainz, of the Popular Party, who likes to light up when meetings get tense.

Sainz says he may support a censure motion that would drive Montejo from office.

Fifty-one percent of Spanish men over age 15 smoked in the fall of 1990, a tie with Greece for first in the European Community, according to the survey by the Bureau for Action on Smoking Prevention in Brussels.

The American Lung Assn. said 30.8% of American men 18 and older smoked in 1988.

Smoking is much less prevalent among Spanish women--fewer than 28% of those over age 18 in spring 1991--but the number is growing rapidly.

“If the doctor tells me in a few years that I have to quit or I’ll need an oxygen mask, then I’ll quit, but only then,” said Ana Sanz, a 26-year-old bartender who has smoked a pack a day since she was 13.

All tobacco is sold through the state monopoly Tabacalera. It rationed cigarettes for 13 years after the civil war of 1936-39, and women were not allowed to buy them.

Ever since, it seems that Spaniards have raced to catch up.

The evidence is in the air. Smoke hangs heavy in cafes, elevators, restaurants and homes. No-smoking signs, like crosswalks, are disregarded.

Spain suffers 40,000 tobacco-related deaths a year in a population of 39 million, the Spanish Anti-Cancer Assn. said, citing Health Ministry figures for 1989.

“Smoking is a social ritual in this country,” said Hortas, the Tabacalera spokesman.

He is not convinced that moderate smoking is dangerous, Hortas said, but acknowledged cutting back his own consumption because of high blood pressure and other health concerns.

Anti-smoking groups know that the challenge is great.

In 1990, the Anti-Cancer Assn. began how-to-quit clinics for businesses, sports and fitness programs around Madrid and anti-tobacco lectures in schools.

Of more than 1,000 smokers invited to quit, about 300 signed up, 76 finished the course and 54 ultimately quit smoking.

That may sound like failure to others, said Isabel de Santiago, the program coordinator, “but for us, for Spain, it’s a success.”