We study retractions associated to suitable models in compact spaces admitting a retractional skeleton and find several interesting consequences. Most importantly, we provide a new characterization of Valdivia compacta using the notion of retractional skeletons, which seems to be helpful when characterizing their subclasses. Further, we characterize Eberlein and semi-Eberlein compacta in terms of retractional skeletons and show that our new characterizations give an alternative proof of the

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... that a continuous image of an Eberlein compact is Eberlein as well as new stability results for the class of semi-Eberlein compacta, solving in particular an open problem posed by Kubiś and Leiderman.