Yelp expanded its international presence this week with the launch of Yelp Spain. Now the Spanish can read and share reviews about local businesses on a community site  in their native language. Though available throughout Spain, Yelp will initially focus its community efforts on Madrid and Barcelona, an approach the company says served them well in the past.

“We are hopeful this shared connection will mean locals in Spain leverage Yelp.es online, as well as via our mobile apps, to find and share even more great and unique businesses with one another,” said Miriam Warren, vice president of european marketing, in a press release.

Yelp is now present in nine countries, including Austria, France, Ireland, United Kingdom and Germany, which we previously covered. Yelp saw 100 percent growth in non U.S. cities and has added local team members in cities such as Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Leeds and Glasgow to name a few. Despite its growth, competitors like Qype, a popular user-generated local reviews site, have a strong European presence. Qype was founded and initially based in Germany before branching out to most European cities.  Last month, Qype had 22 million site visitors.

Yelp is also seeing growth in reviews and mobile. Yelp now hosts 18 million customer reviews, with 2 million written in the first quarter alone and another million last month. It had 4 million mobile users in April, which is more than double last year’s amount. Yelp’s iPhone and Android apps will be available in Spanish now as well.