It’s not surprising: their customers have discovered a sharp rise in fares. One long-time foreign resident found her ride home from the airport after the New Year holiday surprisingly pricey. A €15 fare, which she calculated airport surcharges would turn into just over €18, was quickly “rounded” to 20. “After a day travelling with two small children I didn’t have the energy to argue,” she said.LosersShoppers generally report euro prices exactly match the peseta equivalent and the price of the benchmark loaf is unchanged but office workers say some city-centre restaurants have rounded the price of a fixed menu notably upwards.The capital’s underground system was one of the few places where chaos ruled on January 1 because new software was not installed in time. Such long queues built up at the busiest stations that guards were told to let people ride free.Those who had to pay found prices had risen sharply as local authorities took advantage of the switch to raise single fares by nearly 10 per cent. In other cities prices have gone up by as much as 20 or 25 percent.Bus drivers in Madrid are not allowed to give change during the transition period so passengers have to pay the exact fare – €0.95 or 158 pesetas – not a simple amount to dig out of your pocket for every ride..

It may not yet quite be the “cancer on the presidency” of which John Dean warned Richard Nixon in the early days of Watergate. But the collapse of the energy conglomerate Enron is suddenly shaping up as big, big trouble for George Bush. Enron’s lead attorney, for instance, is Robert Bennett, the $500-an-hour DC superlawyer who featured in Washington’s most recent presidential scandal when he represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit. That led directly to the Monica Lewinsky saga.By any yardstick, Enron is a massive financial scandal, a tale of concealed debt and shell companies, incompetent auditing and scanty regulatory oversight – not to mention the sudden impoverishment of thousands of employees obliged to hold their pension savings in now worthless Enron shares, even as senior executives cashed in stock and stock options for up to $1bn (£700m) during 2000 and 2001.Until now, however, Enron has been the dog which failed to bark – or, more exactly, was ignored as the media concentrated on Afghanistan and barely dared mention such goings-on as the presidential approval ratings hovered around the 90 per cent mark. Enron unravelled in November, but not until 28 December was Mr Bush first asked about the debacle. All that is about to change as the news focus starts to shift from the anti-terror campaign to domestic politics.

Not only is this a mid-term election year in which the Democrats need just half-a-dozen seats to recapture the House of Representatives, but thoughts are already turning to the 2004 White House race. In all these calculations, Enron could prove a factor.Already, at least three Congressional committees have been sniffing around the affair. But the main investigation will be conducted by the Senate’s governmental affairs committee, headed by the Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Mr Lieberman, it will not be forgotten, was Al Gore’s vice-presidential running mate last time and is is widely believed to have ambitions for the top job in 2004.Thus far, Mr Lieberman has followed the Washington scandal script to a T. Echoing investigators of Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater before him, he promises solemnly that his probe will be even-handed, “a search for the truth, not a witchhunt”. But, he warns, “we’re going to go wherever the search takes us”. If so, it could be a most interesting journey.Enron has been a fountain of money for politicians of every hue.

Since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors such donations, it has made campaign contributions of $5.8m (£4m), three-quarters of it to Republicans. The biggest single beneficiaries, unsurprisingly, have been the two Texas senators, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy sits on the Enron board.Like most big corporate donors, it has hedged its bets. On Capitol Hill, 71 of the 100 current senators and nearly half the 435 congressmen have received contributions. The investment paid off with a vengeance, when Enron secured exemption for its energy derivatives business under a 2000 Act regulating commodity futures trading. But the Bush family has been a special object of its attentions.