ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the Spanish business sector’s economic exposure to currency risk in Latin America between 2010 and 2016, testing the effectiveness of hedging with derivatives for the reduction of this risk.MethodologyEconomic exposure is tested with the Jorion model (1990) using both a currency basket and an individualised analysis for the main currencies sustaining business activities between Spain and Latin America: the Mexican peso, Brazilian real, Argentine peso, Chilean peso, and Colombian peso. For the hedging analysis, dynamic panel data models were estimated using a generalised method of moments.ResultsThe results reveal that the number of firms with significant economic exposure is sensitive to the temporal frequency of the observations. The evidence denotes that the firms’ export profile is predominant, both when considering a basket of Latin American currencies and when individually considering the five main pairs of currencies. The only exception is the Argentine peso, where firms’ import profile is slightly higher. The Chilean peso stands out as the currency with the greatest number of firms with significant exposure.OriginalityThis work provides unpublished evidence on economic exposure to currency risk in Latin America in a recent period characterised by two main aspects: an important devaluation of some Latin American currencies with respect to the euro; and an enhancement of Spanish business activities in the region to favour growth during the recent recession of the Spanish economy.