He also owned plantations in the valley of La Ligua that grew fruit trees and vineyards, and another farm in Cabildo called El Ingenio.

Magdalena Petit also maintains in her book La Quintrala that the nickname comes from the quintral, making a comparison to the color of her hair.

She was a mix of Amerindian, Spanish, and German blood, which had given her remarkable physical attributes "that made her very attractive to men", according to the chronicles of bishop Francisco González de Salcedo (1622–1634).

It is said that one of her aunts, along with her grandmother Águeda Flores (daughter of Tala Canta Ilabe, the Incan governor of Talagante), had approached the young woman with the pagan practices of witchcraft.

One of the first accusations against her was that she had murdered her own father,[1] poisoning him with the dinner she had prepared for him (apparently chicken, according to Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna).

She thought a husband would change her granddaughter's ways and offered a generous dowry (45,349 pesos, a considerable sum at the time) in return.

In September 1626, at the age of 22, Catalina entered into a marriage of convenience with the Spanish colonel Alonso Campofrío de Carvajal y Riberos.

The priest who married them was Pedro de Figueroa; the legend says that Catalina never forgave him and tried to assassinate him, although according to another version she fell in love with him and harassed him to the point of exhaustion, but to no avail.

Alonso Campofrio immediately began to rise through the ranks of public office, even replacing Catalina's relative, Rodolfo Lísperguer, as mayor.

It is also said that she beat and stabbed a former lover, Enrique Enríquez de Guzmán of the Order of Malta, on the grounds that he had played with her feelings (since he had refused to give her a cross, a symbol of his nobility, in exchange for a kiss).

[5] It is also said that she severed the left ear of Martín de Ensenada, and that she killed a knight of Santiago in front of another gentleman, after a romantic date.

This included the farm "El Ingenio" and others of the same size (both in Cuyo, beyond the Andes, and in Petorca), and minor properties near the mountains in the suburbs of Santiago (the current commune of La Reina).

Now a wealthy landowner and rancher, Catalina personally directed the activities of the properties, riding her horses through the valleys where she so enjoyed living, since she hated the city.

In 1633, she tried to kill Luis Vásquez, a cleric from La Ligua, who reproached Catalina for her frivolous life and cruel actions.

In spite of continuous complaints of abuses and cruelties, she did not receive any punishment because she shared her wealth with judges and lawyers, on top of having numerous relatives in important positions.

According to the chronicles of Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, much of her assets were auctioned and her properties abandoned for years, as superstitious people were afraid of having any relation to La Quintrala.

Her figure still lives in Chilean popular culture as the epitome of the perverse and abusive woman, as well as the oppression of Spanish rule.