She was born in the Spanish city of Lerida and completed her undergraduate degree from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1971.
[1] Her field research took place in Spain and Portugal, in the towns of Asturias, Ávila, and Evora.
[2] Cátedra's early work in Asturias in the 1970s examined perceptions of death, suicide, and the afterlife in the community, and made use of techniques from symbolic anthropology.
Cátedra later moved to working in Ávila, where she analyzed the political aspects of the saints of the town.
[2] A 2004 biographical dictionary of anthropologists described Cátedra as a "pioneer of urban anthropology in Spain".