A/HRC/43/47/Add.1 38. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government review and amend legislation and other provisions dealing with the prohibition of discrimination to ensure that any list of grounds contain at least those routinely contained in major international human rights treaties, namely, any grounds such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. D. Racism, xenophobia and hate speech 39. Another important area of concern for minorities is protection against hate speech and incitement to violence. The Government has made considerable progress in addressing those issues and must be commended for the establishment of specialized units to address hate crime, within the offices of provincial public prosecutors, and of a national special prosecutor to oversee the coordination of anti-discrimination activities. Other noteworthy protections, especially in terms of legislation, include article 510 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes public incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination and the acts of those who, with knowledge of its falseness or reckless disregard for the truth, distribute defamatory information, which can often target minorities and other vulnerable groups. Following the Special Rapporteur’s mission to Spain, a circular clarified how this provision should be interpreted, helping to circumscribe more clearly its application, particularly to protect minorities. 10 Article 170 of the Criminal Code provides for greater penalties if threats are intended to frighten members of a minority and other identified groups. Article 22 of the Criminal Code identifies as an aggravating circumstance an intent to commit an offence on the grounds of racism, antisemitism, the religion or beliefs of the victim or his or her ethnicity, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. 40. While welcoming noteworthy initiatives such as that of the government-supported Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia, which collects information on hate crime and hate speech and conducts training programmes for educators, law enforcement officials and others, the Special Rapporteur notes that Spain, along with San Marino, are the only two members of the Council of Europe not to have an independent equality body. The Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination is still not an independent entity, engages in few activities and has few resources at its disposal. Proposals to rectify this situation were under discussion in 2019. 41. The Special Rapporteur was informed that minorities such as Roma, people of African Descent, migrants, and religious minorities such as Muslims report that they sense that they remain the main targets and victims of intolerance expressed in hate speech. In addition, connected to events that took place in Catalonia in 2017, the Special Rapporteur received reports of an apparent increase in hate speech, vilification, vandalism, physical threats and even assaults against members of the Catalan minority and, to a lesser degree, other national minorities. Some reports suggest that authorities are not sufficiently responding to or prosecuting these allegations, thus indirectly contributing to an atmosphere of increasing intolerance against minorities and of nationalistic vitriol. While the Special Rapporteur is not able to comment on the veracity on the allegations, he notes that, among members of those minorities, as among members of migrant communities and people of African descent, there is significant distrust of the police and even the judiciary. 42. Spain has developed a number of policies and approaches to these challenges that must be commended, including proposals for a more comprehensive organic law on discrimination and for a comprehensive strategy against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other related intolerance, as well as institutional structures at the national, provincial and local levels, including the Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination and others referred to above. However, concerns were expressed that many of those initiatives were either developed without direct input or representation from the minorities affected, or still do not necessarily result in concrete implementation action. Issues such as the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of Roma in news items in which Roma are portrayed in a negative light, or in criminal cases where a defendant’s ethnic origin is regularly revealed when a Roma is involved, are recurrent and largely unaddressed 10 Attorney General’s Office, circular No. 7/2019 of 14 May. Available at www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2019-7771 (in Spanish). 9