‘Vojvodina = Catalonia,’ reads the graffiti on a wall in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city and seat of the autonomous northern province of Vojvodina. Another predicts Vojvodina “will soon be a republic!”

Such graffiti is commonplace in this laidback city on the River Danube near Serbia’s northern border with Hungary.

It is the work of the so-called Mlada (Young) Vojvodina, an informal group of Vojvodina natives who want greater independence from the Serbian capital Belgrade.

Their name echoes that of the underground Young Bosnia movement that, in trying to force the Austro-Hungarian Empire out of the Balkans, shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 and lit the fuse for World War One.