Attacks have been recorded in Spain amid a confrontation between Balkan criminal clans

With four targeted attacks in Barcelona since July, the city has become the latest battleground in a war between Balkan crime clans that has left a trail of blood across Europe.

Sitting at sun-drenched sidewalk tables in the heart of Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood, diners linger over cappuccinos and a steady supply of brunch — eggs, smashed avocado, and pancakes.  

They likely have no idea this placid corner was the scene of a targeted attack on an alleged organized crime figure less than two weeks ago. And that was only the latest of four such shootings since July 2025, as a Europe-wide war between two Balkan crime clans spills into Barcelona.

On April 14, at around 4 p.m., two men dressed in black opened fire at point-blank range on a man sitting with a woman and a small child. Four out of five shots hit the man who fell to the floor with blood gushing from the wounds. The woman and child were unharmed.

Another woman passing by on the street suffered a slight injury to the chest, either from an explosion of gunpowder or a projectile grazing her, according to media reports from the scene. A representative of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police, told OCCRP the woman is fine now.

The police representative said the identities of the gunmen are unknown, but the target was Krsto “The Terminator” Vujić, an alleged member of the Škaljari crime clan. Vujić died in hospital on April 20, becoming the latest fatality in the war between the Škaljari and their rivals from the Kavač group.

The Kavač and Škaljari clans both hail from Kotor, a city on Montenegro’s picturesque Adriatic coast, and were once part of the same organization smuggling drugs from South America into Europe. The clans split in 2014 after a cocaine deal went bad in the Spanish coastal city of Valencia, and they have been killing each other ever since, as OCCRP has reported. 

Murders have been recorded in Montenegro, Serbia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, Ukraine and Turkey. 

“The methods are also familiar: shootings, car bombs, snipers in some cases, and carefully planned assassinations,” said Saša Đorđević, a senior analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Now, Barcelona has become the latest battleground, police say.

The regional police representative told OCCRP’s media partner, El Periódico de Catalunya, that Barcelona has been pulled into an “internationally-waged war by Kavač and Škaljari.”

Several factors attract organized crime figures to Barcelona, according to Đorđević, who noted that it is “a major coastal city with good transport links, significant commercial traffic and enough anonymity for transnational criminal actors to work, meet and hide.”

But if Balkan crime clan figures were hiding out in Barcelona, their enemies eventually found them.

The spate of targeted attacks began on July 15, 2025, with Filip Knežević, an alleged Kavač member who was wanted in Serbia for his alleged killing of two Škaljari members on the Greek island of Corfu in 2020. Knežević was gunned down while entering his apartment building in Barcelona’s Eixample district.

Just over two weeks later, on August 2, another alleged Škaljari named Predrag Vujošević was shot in the arm while walking his dog in central Barcelona. He is the only one of the four targets to have survived.

Vujošević was serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking, El Pais reported, but was required to sleep in prison only on weekdays and permitted to spend weekends on the outside. 

The next victim was Milan Milić, also allegedly part of the Škaljari clan, according to police. He was shot and killed on December 22 in Castelldefels, a municipality close to Barcelona. 

With the latest murder, of Vujić in Barcelona’s bustling Poblenou neighborhood, “more than 80 killings have been publicly linked to the clash” unfolding across Europe, according to Đorđević.

“That is why Barcelona should not be seen as an exception, but as another European stage in a long-standing criminal conflict,” he said.

Vujić himself had allegedly played a role in the war between the clans. He was reportedly on trial in absentia in Montenegro for allegedly participating in the murder of a Kavač member. He was also indicted in Montenegro for alleged cocaine trafficking just a week before he was shot while sitting outside the Barcelona restaurant.