Despite its natural surroundings, the municipality of Villanueva del Arzobispo, in the province of Jaén, has positioned itself as the Spanish locality with the most polluted air. This is revealed by the report 'Air Quality in Spain during 2025', prepared by Ecologists in Action. The monitoring station in this municipality recorded the country's highest concentration of benzopyrene (BaP).
The report details that the station in Villanueva del Arzobispo reached an annual average of 0.8 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m³) of benzopyrene. This compound, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) classified as carcinogenic, is primarily generated by incomplete combustion, such as that of biomass. Although this figure exceeds the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), it remains below the European legal limit and represents an improvement compared to 2021, when 1.4 ng/m³ were recorded.
Bailén, another town in Jaén, also appears in the document for exceeding the WHO's recommended threshold (0.12 ng/m³), as does the Granada Norte station. However, none of these stations are in breach of the current European legal limit.
Ecologists in Action estimates that around 13.5 million Spaniards, 27.4% of the population, breathed air with benzopyrene concentrations higher than recommended by the WHO in 2025. The industrial areas of Bailén and Villanueva del Arzobispo are explicitly mentioned among the affected areas.
The organization criticizes the limited assessment of benzopyrene in Spain, due to the small number of monitoring stations and the lack of data in some autonomous communities, which hinders a complete diagnosis of the population's actual exposure.
