AbstractThis study analyses the framing processes of the Indignados movement in Barcelona, as an exemplar of the latest wave of protests, and argues that it expresses a new ecological–economic way out of the crisis. It finds that the movement was not just a reaction to the economic crisis and austerity policies, but that it put forward a metapolitical critique of the social imaginary and (neo)liberal representative democracy. The diagnostic frames of the movement denunciate the subjugation of politics and justice to economics, and reject the logic of economism. The prognostic frames of the movement advance a vision of socio‐ecological sustainability and of ‘real democracy’, each articulated differently by a ‘pragmatist’ and an ‘autonomist’ faction within the movement. It argues that frames are overarching outer boundaries that accommodate different ideologies. Ideologies can nevertheless also be put into question by antagonizing frames. Furthermore, through the lens of the Indignados critique, the distinction between materialist and post‐materialist values that characterizes the New Social Movement literature is criticized, as ‘real democracy’ is connected to social and environmental justice as well as to a critique of economism and the ‘imperial mode of living’. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment