Strain and breakdown approaches, once at the core of social movement research, played a marginal role in scientific inquiry over the last decades. Protests spread across the globe as a reaction towards the 2008 Great Recession, increasing hardship, inequality and discontent towards the political status quo. Based on statistical analyses performed with a unique panel data set from Spain, in this article I revisit the association between grievance theories and mobilization, developing two central arguments. First, some groups that are relative losers of the recession are more willing to protest. Moreover, political grievances mediate the effect of both material-objective and attitudinal-subjective socioeconomic grievances on involvement in contentious activities. Second, I contend that there is an endogenous association between grievances and protest behaviour. Not only grievances are associated with protest in austerity-ridden scenarios, but involvement in protest performances shapes attitudinal configurations related to grievances, thus shaping mobilization potentials.