Meantime, the Council for the Indies, at Seville, was also unfriendly to Menendez. Tired of the delay in building La Fuerza, it recommended to the king his removal in favor of someone who would more vigorously expedite that essential work. It was the bitter irony of fate that he should thus be condemned for failing to do the very thing upon which he had most set his heart to do. The Council also condemned him for faults of administration which were due, it held, to his personal neglect through absence from the island, and it therefore urged that a governor be appointed in his place who would spend his time chiefly in Cuba and would give to that island and its interests his first and best thoughts. These representations were made to the King as early as the spring of 1571, and they had much weight with him. The sequel was that in 1572 Menendez was recalled to Spain, and was commissioned for a work similar to that in which he had first won distinction, to wit, the protection of Spanish commerce against hostile privateers; only it was not now the commerce between Spain and Mexico which he was to safeguard in the West Indian seas, but that between Spain and the Netherlands, along the coast of France and in the British Channel. In that capacity he was commander of a considerable fleet, and the work was doubtless in itself congenial to him, and one which he was well fitted to perform with success. But his heart was set on Florida, with which he aspired to be identified as Cortez had been with Mexico and Pizarro with Peru; and he bitterly lamented his being so far separated from that country. So far as his governorship of Cuba was concerned, which is all in which we need here be interested, he had at this time reached the beginning of the end. The king decided to remove him from that office, though probably not so much to get rid of him there as to be able to keep his valuable talents continually employed nearer home. He had decided that Menendez was of more value to him as a captain of his fleet than as a civil administrator. Accordingly at the beginning of 1573 Alfonso de Caceres Ovando, a temporarily retired judge of the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, was commissioned to make the customary investigation of Menendez's administration. He was not, however, appointed to succeed Menendez as governor, but the latter was left for the time in office. This was a mark of the high favor in which Menendez was held by the king; and another token to the same effect was the provision that Menendez need not personally appear to answer any charges which might be made against him, but might, if he preferred, send an attorney in his stead. A third and perhaps still more notable indication of royal favor was in the fact that when Menendez elected not to appear in person, and not to send an attorney, but to ignore the whole investigation, he was not called to task, but was permitted to go without so much as a reprimand.