With great pageantry, the corrida proceeds through three stages-- tercios. In the first tercio, the bull races out of a dark tunnel into the hot sunlight of the ring: fierce, proud, bursting with energy, responding to every provocation with a charge, naively hooking its horns at illusory targets. Then mounted picadores lance the bull's neck muscles: The bull's head drops, and its vitality begins palpably to drain away.
In the second tercio, banderilleros-- assistants to the killer, el matador-- place pointed, barbed sticks-- banderillas-- in the bull's shoulders. Bewildered, in anger and pain, the bull continues to respond with valiant, futile charges.
In the final tercio, the matador demonstrates his mastery of the bull, while completing the bull's humiliation. Flanks heaving, the exhausted bull stands panting, matted with dust, sweat, and blood, finally beginning to understand the nature of its adversary. If the bull is lucky, it dies quickly, from one thrust of la espada, the killing sword. However messy the bull's death turns out to be, if the bull is deemed to have fought with acceptable courage, its body participates in a final ceremony: A team of mules drags the body around the ring so that los aficionados, the fans, can show their respect for the dead bull.
A difference in the possible fate of a bull entering the ring and that of someone with terminal cancer is that, on rare occasions, a bull's behavior in the ring is deemed to have been so exemplary that it is spared.
