Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Tuesday pardoned nine Catalan separatist leaders responsible for the 2017 bid for Catalonia’s independence.

The prisoners have to wait a few days for King Felipe VI to sign the pardons, as well as for the pardons to be published in the gazette. The pardons commute sentences of 9 to 13 years for sedition and public misuse of funds, but they retain the barring of the officials from public office. The move is a bid by Sanchez’s government to calm tensions in the volatile region where a drive for independence four years ago resulted in the greatest political crisis the country had faced in 40 years, according to the BBC.